iWorld
Dekkho: Integration ease aids Brightcove power OTT service
MUMBAI: Brightcove, a leading provider of cloud services for video, announced today that Dekkho, a streaming video service specializing in delivering premium content from India’s top content creators, has selected Brightcove to power its OTT service. The service, which debuted in February 2017, was built on Brightcove Video Cloud, enabling Dekkho to leverage an industry-leading online video platform to offer consumers VOD access to 12,000 hours of programming across desktop and mobile applications.
Dekkho provides its customers with a curated, high-quality video experience with video content ranging from three to 45 minutes. It partners with leading content producers such as Sony Music, Zee Music, Culture Machine, Times Group, and OML.
“Brightcove constantly remains ahead of the curve, rapidly innovating to incorporate and leverage the constant changes in the online video industry,” said Dekkho co-founder Vinay Pillai.
“Scalability was most critical for us. We need to deliver our content across a broad range of customers, from those with low-end phones and slow internet connections to people with high-end mobile devices and larger screens. Not only has Brightcove enabled us to do that technically, but their service has been outstanding. We were promised Tier-1 support and Brightcove has delivered.”
Improving the viewing experience is one of the top challenges facing media organizations in 2017, and Dekkho required a platform with robust APIs that was easy for their application development team to leverage; in particular, the publisher was eager to integrate the video platform with its CMS for simpler ingestion of its videos. The scalability of the Brightcove platform, along with integrations with the majority of the content management systems (CMS), ad networks, and CDNs differentiated Brightcove from other providers.
“Dekkho is yet another great example of the rise of OTT in India. They’ve managed to quickly launch an intuitive and unique experience, and we’re looking forward to being part of their success,” said Brightcove Asia VP Tomer Azenkot. “Brightcove is excited to be working with this innovative service and helping the company as online video consumption in India evolves.”
iWorld
Bill Ackman makes a $64bn bid for Universal Music Group
The hedge fund boss wants to list the world’s biggest record label in New York and thinks he knows exactly what ails it
NEW YORK: Bill Ackman wants to buy the world’s biggest record label. Pershing Square Capital Management, the hedge fund run by the billionaire investor, submitted a non-binding proposal on Tuesday to acquire all outstanding shares of Universal Music Group in a business combination transaction worth roughly $64.4 billion (around 55.8 billion euros).
Under the terms of the offer, UMG shareholders would receive 9.4 billion euros in cash, equivalent to 5.05 euros per share, plus 0.77 shares of a newly created company, dubbed New UMG, for each share held. Pershing Square values the total package at 30.40 euros per share, a 78 per cent premium to UMG’s closing price on April 2.
The deal would see UMG merge with Pershing Square SPARC Holdings, with the combined entity incorporating as a Nevada corporation and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. New UMG would publish financial statements under US GAAP and become eligible for S&P 500 index inclusion. Pershing Square says the transaction is expected to close by year-end, with all equity financing backstopped by Ackman’s firm and its affiliates, and all debt financing committed at signing. The transaction would cancel 17 per cent of UMG’s outstanding shares, leaving New UMG with 1.541 billion shares outstanding.
Ackman has a long history with UMG. Pershing Square first bought approximately 10 per cent of the company from Vivendi in the summer of 2021 for around $4 billion, around the time of UMG’s listing on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange. He has since trimmed that position, raising around $1.4 billion from the sale of a 2.7 per cent stake in March 2025, and resigned from UMG’s board in May 2025, citing new executive and board obligations arising from recent investments.
His diagnosis of UMG’s troubles is blunt. The company’s stock has fallen around 33 per cent over the past twelve months on the Euronext Amsterdam exchange, and Ackman lays out six reasons why. These include uncertainty around the Bolloré Group’s 18 per cent stake in the company, the postponement of UMG’s US listing, the underutilisation of UMG’s balance sheet, the absence of a publicly disclosed capital allocation plan and earnings algorithm, a failure to reflect UMG’s 2.7 billion euro stake in Spotify in its valuation, and what Ackman calls suboptimal shareholder investor relations, communications and engagement.
The Bolloré stake has long cast a shadow over the company. Cyrille Bolloré stepped down from UMG’s board in July 2025 as the Bolloré Group battled the French financial markets regulator over its stake in Vivendi, which holds a further capital interest in UMG. UMG had confidentially filed a draft registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in July 2025 for a proposed secondary listing in America, but put those plans on hold in March 2026, citing market conditions.
Ackman has kind words for UMG’s management, at least. “Since UMG’s listing, Lucian Grainge and the company’s management have done an excellent job nurturing and continuing to build a world-class artist roster and generating strong business performance,” he said. But he made his diagnosis plain: “UMG’s stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business and importantly, all of them can be addressed with this transaction.”
In other words, Ackman believes UMG is a great business trapped inside a broken structure. If the board agrees, he intends to fix that, loudly and in New York.
