Hong Kong - One of China’s newly minted technology billionaires signed a deal to buy a controlling stake in Grindr, the world’s biggest gay social-networking app.
Beijing Kunlun Tech Company, an Internet games developer, offered $93 million in cash for 60 percent of New Grindr LLC, the company said in a statement to the Shenzhen stock exchange. Beijing Kunlun’s chairman, Zhou Yahui, became a billionaire after the company listed shares last year.
Zhou, worth $1.7 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has overseen seven deals for Kunlun since April, including Grindr, the US-based app, and a minority stake in British mortgage lender LendInvest Ltd. The addition of the mobile app will broaden its portfolio of services and create a new source of revenue, the company said.
Beijing Kunlun’s shares rose by the maximum daily 10 percent limit after it announced the pact. The deal awaits antitrust review by the US government.
“We have taken this investment in our company to accelerate our growth,” Joel Simkhai, founder of Grindr, said in a blog post. “It will generally be business as usual for us here at Grindr, but with a renewed sense of purpose and additional resources.”
Changing culture
Grindr and Kunlun didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Grindr, which calls itself the world’s largest gay social network, hosts 2 million visitors daily across 196 countries, according to a company fact sheet. The Los Angeles-based mobile app, released in 2009, matches users based on personal photos and location.
It’s unclear whether Kunlun intends to bring Grindr to China, where attitudes toward homosexuality have undergone a radical transformation over past decades. Once a facet of Chinese culture among the elite, it was pushed underground during the Communist era, and the Chinese Psychiatric Association officially classified homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder until 2001.
Recently, the gay scene has seen a resurgence. Blued, a domestic gay social-networking app founded by a former police officer, has attracted more than 3 million daily users and secured funding from venture capitalists DCM Ventures.
BLOOMBERG