MUMBAI: After two months of discussions, Eros International has announced that it has signed a term sheet to acquire controlling stake in Techzone (trading name for Universal Power Systems Private Limited).

The agreement will be signed by the end of this month, and the deal will allow Eros to have a Techzone as their digital arm of its own.

Eros CEO Jyoti Deshpande said, "Techzone will be a strong addition to our Eros Now strategy where content meets technology and distribution. With Techzone’s billing integration and distribution in place across major telecom operators and average transaction traffic of over 25 million monthly over the past three years, we expect this deal to complement our existing Eros Now service. With 870 million mobile subscribers (including over 60 million internet enabled smart phones) in India as of year-end 2013, this is an exciting space for us."

Techzone CEO and MD Naveen Bhandari commented on the deal, "This is indeed a proud moment for Techzone to align with a market leader such as Eros. The consumption of content through mobile platforms is on the increase and the timing of this alliance could not have been better."

Techzone was established in 1999 as an aggregator, developer and distributor of entertainment content via mobile platforms in India. Techzone is particularly focused on Bollywood films and music markets and has significant region-specific content in Tamil and Telugu. The company has done an average of 25 million SMS, WAP or IVR transactions per month over the past three years across 12 major telecom operators in India for which it bills the customers directly through its billing platform. This excludes CRBT transactions which are also marketed and distributed by Techzone but billed by the telecom operators directly. In a given month, a single customer may engage in multiple transactions.