Sports-technology firm Dream11 has raised fresh capital from a bunch of investment firms including US-based Tiger Global Management and TPG, as online gaming ventures in India continue to attract marquee investors.
The gaming company said in a statement Monday it has completed an investment round worth $225 million (about Rs 1,650 crore) comprising a primary capital infusion and secondary transactions.
Tiger Global, TPG Tech Adjacencies, Indian private equity firm ChrysCapital and Footpath Ventures led the round.
TPG Tech Adjacencies is a tech-focussed investment vehicle that American private equity firm TPG had raised last year with a corpus of $1.6 billion. Footpath Ventures is a US-based firm that invests mainly in Asia.
Dream11 didn’t give a breakup of the primary and secondary components. It didn’t reveal the sellers’ identity, either.
Earlier this month, VCCircle reported that TPG was among the frontrunners to invest in Dream Sports, which houses online gaming brands Dream11, FanCode and DreamX.
A person familiar with the matter had earlier told VCCircle that Tiger Global and ChrysCapital were likely to provide a partial exit of Vani Kola-led Kalaari Capital, Renuka Ramnath-founded Multiples Alternate Asset Management and San Francisco-based Think Investments.
Those investors had also sold partial stakes in Dream11’s previous funding round in April last year. Steadview Capital had picked up a stake in Dream11 for an estimated $60 million at that time.
“The sports sector has high growth potential in India. There is a significant opportunity to enhance the fan experience and… to leverage technology in ways that will deepen the connection between Indian fans and the sports they love," said Akshay Tanna, a managing director at TPG.
Avendus acted as the financial adviser to Dream11 for the transaction.
Dream11 was founded in 2008 by Harsh Jain, who is its CEO, and Bhavit Sheth, who is the chief operating officer.
The fantasy sport platform, run by Mumbai-based Dream11 Fantasy Pvt. Ltd, allows users to create virtual teams comprising real-life players and lets them organise a match based on statistical performances of those players in actual games. The platform offers fantasy cricket, football, kabaddi and basketball.
Apart from Dream11, several online gaming companies in India have raised funding over the past few months as the number of gamers rose in the wake of stay-at-home restrictions amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier this month, Tictok Skill Games Pvt Ltd, which operates vernacular real-money gaming platform WinZO, raised $18 million (Rs 132 crore) in a Series B fundraising round.
Last month, Gamezop raised $4.3 million and RummyBaazi.com pulled in seed funding. Also in August, New Delhi-based Lumikai said it had floated and hit the first close of an early-stage fund to back local gaming and interactive media companies.
In July, mobile game development studio Firescore Interactive Pvt. Ltd raised $500,000 in a funding round led by multinational studio and publisher CrazyLabs.
In the same month, digital content, gaming and technology platform JetSynthesys Pvt. Ltd raised around $40 million from investors including family offices of Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan.
