Mariner Valleys Technology Pte Ltd, which runs fantasy sports platform Podeum, has raised $1 million (around Rs 8.13 crore) in a pre-seed funding round from Titan Capital, RTP Global, Point One Capital, and Bharat Founders Fund.
The round also saw the participation from angel investors including Sujeet Kumar (Udaan), Ganesh Krishnan and Srini (Growthstory) and Harsh (Fynd), among others.
The Bengaluru-based company plans to use the fresh funds for product development.
“Podeum is doubling engagement volumes month-on-month, with creators fueling the growth in the number of fans. Our vision is to build for sports creators and fans as what twitch has built for the gaming ecosystem,” said Ayush Prashant, co-founder and chief executive at Podeum.
Podeum was founded in 2022 by Ayush Prashant, Dhananjay Mishra, Mayank Sharma, and Parthsarthi. It aims to integrate multiple activities that take place before and during a sports game - pre-match analysis, live-match commentary, online discussions on social media, and fantasy and prediction contests in a single platform.
The platform currently is focussing on cricket, with plans of branching out to other sports as well in the coming future. It claims to have hosted more than 200 sports creators on its platform, including the likes of Wasim Jaffer, Veda Krishnamurthy, and Navneeth Krishna.
Gurugram-based Titan Capital is a venture capital firm established in 2015. It has participated in the $1.35 million seed funding round of fashion and apparel business-to-business marketplace Showroom B2B and in the $3.5 million seed funding round of AI-backed customer data and marketing platform Contlo in December 2022.
The gaming sector has had a tumultuous time in the last one year. The sector which is estimated to reach $7 billion by 2026, saw the closure of Google and Temasek-backed ShareChat’s fantasy gaming platform Jeet11in December 2022. Fantasy sports platform Dream11, saw its profit decline 56.7% to Rs 142 crore in the financial year FY22 from Rs 327.1 crore in the fiscal before.
The hit to the gaming industry has been due to legal ambiguity pertaining concerning such apps which is present in the different state laws. However, the Indian government, on 3 January, proposed an amendment to the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, to regulate the online gaming market in the country.
