Serum Institute of India (SII) Chief Adar Poonawaalla has picked up a 20 per cent stake in Wakau Interactive, a short-video sharing platform and a subsidiary of JetSynthesys, for an undisclosed amount.

Poonawalla joins superstar Amitabh Bachchan as Wakau’s league of investors. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

Wakau – a community-driven social media platform – offers a combination of mobile-first screen experience and short video content in entertainment and fashion domains with an associated video-commerce element. Launched by digital entertainment and technology company JetSynthesys, Wakau has over 4 lakh curated user-generated videos and a song library featuring more than 10,000 curated regional and main media songs for short videos. Wakau currently has more than 5 lakh daily user engagement events, a statement said.

“New content formats like short entertainment and fashion videos are gaining wide scale popularity and Wakau, leveraging its advanced AI based tech stack has made it so easy, creative, fun and safe for consumers with its high levels of personalisation. I’d like to congratulate the team on the AI award and am delighted to join this juggernaut of possibilities with Wakau as it sets off on its next phase of growth,” Poonawalla said.

Rajan Navani, Vice Chairman and Managing Director at JetSynthesys, said Wakau was created with one goal – to entertain users and promote creativity.

“It empowers the creator community with both distribution and monetisation of content through new-age mechanisms like NFTs. Short video sharing social media platforms have been seeing great traction from users since the last couple of years,” he added.

Navani said the company has consistently leveraged various AI/ML service offerings from AWS in combination with in-house developed Data Science models to maintain content quality, filter out inappropriate content to provide a safer experience for users, develop new features and designs based on user requirements and serve the best content as per the user’s preference and interest while keeping them engaged.

“Adar has been privy to the team’s work done so far and sees the tremendous potential that the platform has. We’re thrilled to have him with us on the journey in official capacity now, alongside Big B, and we look forward to jointly unlocking newer milestones for Wakau in the future,” he added.