Chinese Billionaire Nabs Major Stake in Grindr

Posted January 12, 2016 8:55 AM by with 0 comments

It’s not often Bloomberg News will drop a bombshell that will resonate here at GayPornBlog but fasten your seat belts, kids, it’s going to be a bump flight ….

chinese company buys major stake in grindr

ZhouYahui, Beijing Kunlun Tech Co. Chairman

Beijing Kunlun Tech Co., an Internet games company that helped introduce Angry Birds to China, offered $93 million in cash for 60 percent of New Grindr LLC,

Beijing Kunlun Chairman Zhou Yahui, who became a billionaire after the company listed shares last year, was scouting other potential investments in the U.S., according to a company spokeswoman, Sophie Chen.

Zhou, worth $1.7 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, has overseen seven deals for Kunlun since April — including Grindr and a minority stake in British mortgage lender LendInvest Ltd. The addition of the mobile app Grindr will broaden its portfolio of services and create a new source of revenue, the company said.

As I first reported in September, at one time, the heterosexual infidelity site Ashley Madison eyed purchasing Grindr before backing away from the idea. Looks like this time though, this is going to happen.

chinese company buys major stake in grindr

Joel Simkhai, Grindr CEO

Grindr CEO and founder Joel Simkhai has also weighed in on the official Grindr Blog:

For nearly seven years, Grindr has self-funded its growth, and in doing so, we have built the largest network for gay men in the world. We have taken this investment in our company to accelerate our growth, to allow us to expand our services for you, and to continue to ensure that we make Grindr the number one app and brand for our millions of users.

It will generally be business as usual for us here at Grindr, but with a renewed sense of purpose and additional resources to deliver a great product to you. We hope you are enjoying our app and know you will be delighted by the new features and services we have planned this year.

Grindr, and it’s straight counterpart, Tinder, were also recently in the new, for far less celebratory reasons as reported by the The Independent: Dating App Related Crime Spikes 700% in England and Wales. Considering the Grindr related heinous crimes I have covered for us here, while not a surprise, it’s chilling to see spelled out:

There were 412 reports of crime in England and Wales mentioning Grindr or Tinder in 2015, a far cry from the 55 reports filed in 2013.

In 2014, the number of crimes reported made a huge leap to 204, according to figures obtained by the Press Association under the Freedom of Information Act.
Among the crimes alerted to the police, there were reports of rape, grooming, and attempted murder included.

Bottom line, it’s a cold cruel world out there kids. Buckle up!

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