ZASH Global Media and Entertainment has announced it has agreed to acquire the remaining approximate 20 percent in Lomotif (a rival of TikTok and Kuaishou) that’s looking to expand its foothold in the India, which has been described as the second largest market in the world for such products.

Short-format video sharing platform TikTok, along with a host of over 50 Chinese apps and services, is banned in India.

In February, according to a company release issued in New York, ZASH entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority controlling interest in Lomotif.

“We believe very strongly in the user-generated contact space and it is a great honour for us to be able to purchase the remaining shares of Lomotif,” Ted Farnsworth, co-founder, ZASH, said in a statement.

Lomotif is one of the fastest growing video-sharing social networking platforms in its category over the last three years, boasting of 225+ million installations of the app globally in over 200 countries in 300+ languages.

Current global expansion of Lomotif is underway in India, the world’s second largest market, and a country where competitor TikTok is banned.

With the number of social media users in India currently eclipsing 350 million, and social network users in the country expected to be nearly 450 million in 2023, the push into India is a major focus for Lomotif and parent company ZASH.

Lomotif recently introduced a groundbreaking new format for talent discovery titled ‘You’ve Been Scouted’, which invites users to compete in a global competition to crown the platform’s top music performer, and reward them with a record label deal and album produced by Grammy Award-winning, multi-platinum mega producer Teddy Riley.

The recent launch of ‘You’ve Been Scouted’ in the first dance off contest in India, proved to be an extremely large success achieving over one million downloads in the first 30 days alone.

Over 300 million videos are watched on the platform per month and over 10 billion atomic clips (user generated content or UGC) have been used to create more than 750 million videos on the platform since its launch.

The addition of Lomotif enhances ZASH’s offering by adding a short-form video component to its overall ecosystem as the company continues to grow as a global content-centric technology company.

“With the growth that we have seen recently and continue to see overall in UGC, we feel that this is the perfect positioning to become one of the top leaders competing with TikTok and others for Vinco and Zash as the completion of our two company’s merger becomes imminent,” Farnsworth added.

Lomotif is also carving out an imposing presence in the music space, having recently partnered with LiveXLive for global live streaming distribution of Music Lives 2021, which drew an incredible 37+ million views on the Lomotif platform alone.

Lomotif is a leading video-sharing social networking platform co-founded by video enthusiast Paul Yang in 2014. It has been granted three technology patents uniquely focused on empowering creators to share and watch short videos with ease through remix and collaboration.

It is one of five partners selected by Snapchat for a bi-directional integration for posting stories between the two platforms.

ZASH Global Media and Entertainment Corporation claims it’s an evolving network of synergetic companies working together to disrupt the media and entertainment industry.