Ahmedabad-based eSports platform Gamerji has raised an undisclosed amount from Lead Angels Network as part of its ongoing seed funding round.
In December, early stage technology venture fund Unicorn Ventures invested an undisclosed sum in the Gamerji e-Sports-operated platform as part of the same round. In 2020, the company raised $400,000 from Gujarati firm, La Gajjar Group, as part of a “friends and family round”.
“With online gaming coming of age in India and 190 million gamers in India, we see a tremendous opportunity ahead as the company scales up its reach,” Sushanto Mitra, CEO of Lead Angels Network, in a statement.
Founded in 2019 by Soham Thacker, an avid gamer, Gamerji is an eSports tournament platform that conducts daily matches for multiple games, including Clash Royale, Call of Duty and Free Fire. The platform also works with private organisers, influencers and hosts its own tournaments.
It provides organisers technology on the platform to create an eSports ladder based on the ranking of the player, create squads, collect registration fees and distribute wins to the players’ accounts directly. The matches were previously held on Facebook pages or YouTube, founder Thacker said. Gamerji offers integration with the API of game publishers.
“Small organisers can choose our standardised packages to host tournaments, while with larger influencers, we work on a revenue share basis,” Thacker said. The platform also has a subscriber base that can play any of the free ongoing tournaments, he said.
Gamerji claims to have a user base of 1.3 million to date and hosts nearly 80 matches daily. Of the total, around 30 to 40 are hosted by influencers and organisers. The platform has partnered with close to 200 Indian influencers in eSports.
“There is very little knowledge for amateur and semi-professional gamers in India to grow. This is how the idea of conducting daily tournaments came into focus, for people who might want to participate in small money games,” he said.
Globally, technology platforms such as Toornament help eSports communities and game publishers conduct tournaments using their technology platform. In India, platforms such as Mobile Premier League (MPL), which recently closed a growth funding round, are looking to grow the number of eSports tournaments on their platform.
