The parent company of Indian fantasy sports app Dream 11, Dream Sports has raised a massive $225 million in its latest funding round. The firm prefers to call itself the “end to end sports tech company” in India, which also happens to be a cricket crazy nation and the home of the world’s second-largest internet market.
According to Dream Sports, TPG Adjacencies and Tiger Global Management financed $225 million in its primary and secondary investment rounds. After this financing round, Dream Sports is now valued at a little over $2.5 billion.
India loves cricket and Dream 11 has just cashed in the popularity of the sports. This game explores the fantasy part of the gentle men’s game. With Dream 11, people can pick the best players for any upcoming match, and they can win prizes depending on their team’s performance.
According to Akshay Tanna, Managing Director of TPG, the sports sector has high growth potential in India. He also thinks that there is a huge opportunity to enhance the Indian cricket fan’s experience and they are excited to partner with Dream Sports in order to leverage technology in such a way that will eventually deepen the connection between Indian fans and the sports they love.
This year, Dream 11 has also become the title sponsor of the Indian Premier League, which is basically a cricket league based in India. IPL is also one of the most loved sporting events around the world. For 2020, the sponsorship right was secured by Vivo. However, due to escalating border tension between India and China, and anti-China sentiments Vivo backed out of the sponsorship. The IPL will start later this week, after being postponed for months due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Recently, Dream Sports has expanded into various other verticals including merchandise. According to the CEO and the Co-founder of Dream sports, the game has already more than 100 million users. However, this immensely popular game is not on the Google Play Store and people use it either by sideloading its android app or by using its mobile web.
Avendus Capital acted as the financial advisor to Dream Sports during this funding round.
The CEO and Co-founder of Dream Sports Harsh Jain also said, “As a homegrown Indian company, we are proud to continue adding value to our 10 crore Indian sports fans, investors, employees, and the overall sports ecosystem in India. In the last two years, we have grown beyond fantasy sports to sports content, merchandise, streaming, experiences, and there is much more to come. Our vision is to ‘Make Sports Better’ for India and Indian fans through sports technology and innovation.”
