One97 Communications Ltd, the parent company of Paytm, plans to invest Rs 5 crore ($660,000 lakh at current exchange rate) in sports fan engagement platform Rooter Sports Technologies Pvt. Ltd by participating in its pre-Series A round of funding, two people in the know told Mint.
Adidas’s family office-run leAD sports accelerator and early-stage fund Anthill Ventures will also participate in this round, they said.
Rooter as a platform allows sports fans to get access to specifically curated content in their own preferred languages. It was founded in 2016 by Piyush and Dipesh Agarwal.
Paytm already has a gaming arm which it launched in January 2018 as FirstGames, a joint venture with AGTech Holdings Ltd, which is a Chinese gaming and entertainment company. Paytm rebranded the gaming platform to FirstGames last year.