Gamepe Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates influencer-led live social gaming platform Tamasha.live, has raised Rs 2.5 crore (about $336,250) in a seed funding round.
Investors in this round include 9Unicorns, the venture fund set up by startup incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts, as well as Titan Capital – set up by Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal – and First Cheque.
Other participants in this round include PointOne Capital, OYO Rooms global chief strategy officer Maninder Gulati, LivSpace co-founder Ramakant Sharma, Gromo co-founder Ankit Khandelwal, and OYO vice-president Abhishek Hota.
Another OYO executive Rishabh Kumar and Hotstar assistant vice-president Aakash Kumar also invested in Mumbai-based Tamasha, it said in a statement.
Tamasha, set up earlier this year by Saurabh Gupta and Siddharth Swarnkar, says it is aiming to create a platform combining the experience of reality TV along with online gaming. Influencers and content creators will host games that will have cash prizes.
Swarnkar said the company will use the funding to acquire talent with “cross-functional expertise” as well as invest in product development and grow its user base.
“Their strategies are aligned with the needs and requirements of this emerging market and the space that they are addressing is ripe for disruption,” 9Unicorns co-founder and managing director Apoorva Ranjan Sharma said.
“We aim to give the new generation of content creators the power to entertain their fans through live games and also monetize it effectively in new and unique ways,” Gupta added.
This is the latest investment for 9Unicorns, which hit its first close in September this year at Rs 100 crore (around $13.7 million). The fund says it functions as a sector-agnostic vehicle.
Last week, it led a Rs 1.5 crore (around $201,000) pre-seed funding round in Janani, a startup aiming to develop a full-service fertility care platform providing personalised solutions.
In September, the fund led a seed round in Qans Consumer Products Pvt Ltd, which operates Generation Z-focussed snacks brand TagZ Foods.
Some of 9Unicorns' other bets include financial-technology firm Klub, deep-technology startup Deepsync, AI-based video meta-tagging platform Toch, education-technology startup Qin1, and fitness-focussed The Healthy Company.