Walmart-owned PhonePe’s founders Sameer Nigam and Rahul Chari have acquired the Mumbai franchise in the Prime Volleyball League, the league announced on Monday.
The team is the eighth franchise in the league, which counts card network RuPay as its prime sponsor. Abhijit Bhattacharya, former Indian volleyball team captain, will join the Mumbai Meteors as the general manager.
"As a regular volleyball player, I have a sense of how enthralling the sport can be. And the RuPay PVL gives us a perfect opportunity of building this sport in a professional way to a world-beating level. I am excited about the opportunity," Nigam said an in a press statement.
The league's first season had 24 games, and Season 2 will feature 31 games on Sony Sports Network, which will continue to serve as the league's host broadcaster. A total of 133 million people watched the league on television, with commentary available in English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, or Malayalam.
The league was able to connect with over 84 million fans in India and garner over 5 million audience engagements across a variety of digital channels. It also developed regional connections on the social media site Share Chat and significantly increased video consumption on Moj. It said in a statement that across social media platforms, the videos had over 43 million views.
"The Indian sports ecosystem is a place with lot of room for development, especially in the non-cricket space. The RuPay PVL seems a great opportunity to work and contribute in this direction," Chari said in a statement.
Founded in 2015, PhonePe is one of the leading digital payment apps in India. The company provides several financial services on its platform including investments and insurance.
PhonePe forayed into financial services in 2017 with the launch of gold investments, providing its millions of users with an option to buy 24-karat gold. The company also recently launched silver on its platform.
The platform offers gold and silver investments, mutual funds, and insurance products like tax-saving funds, liquid funds, international travel insurance, and life insurance, among others. The company claims that it has over 400 million registered users and has onboarded 32 million offline merchants across Tier II, III and IV cities and towns.
In the digital payments space, PhonePe pits against Paytm, GooglePay, MobiKwik, and Freecharge as well as new entrant Cred.
