Venture Capital: Indian Fantasy Gaming Group Dream Sports Raises $840M
Dream Sports is the parent of the highly popular fantasy gaming platform Dream 11.
Dream Sports announced last week its raise of $840 million from investors led by Falcon Edge, DST Global, D1 Capital, Redbird Capital and Tiger Global, with the transaction valuing the startup at $8 billion. Existing investors including TPG and Footpath Ventures also participated in the funding. (Business Standard)
Earlier this year, in March, Dream had raised $400 million at a valuation of $5 billion.
“Our vision and mission is to create an entrepreneur-led virtuous cycle of investment, innovation and wealth creation for all stakeholders in the sports ecosystem, from fans to athletes, teams and leagues. Our investors have deep experience in developing sports ecosystems globally. We are fortunate to have their guidance to ‘make sports better’ for 1 billion Indian fans,” said Harsh Jain, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder, Dream Sports, in a statement.
Rare, profitable unicorn
Dream Sports has a user base of 140 million Indian fans and in FY 2020 reported a profit of Rs 181 crore (US$ 24 million) in FY20, versus a loss of Rs 87.8 crore (US$ 11.72 million) in FY19.
Revenues during the year jumped 166% to Rs 2130 crore (US$282 million) according to regulatory filings.
“The firm augmented its revenues and per-unit price realisation by deploying innovative marketing strategies and offering exciting new products,” it said in the documents.
“The depth of designing capabilities was the core to our success over the years,” it added.
Dream 11 now ranks as the one of the largest firms in India’s fantasy gaming market, and is likely to seek a US listing by 2022. It was founded in 2008 by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth.
Dream Sports is an umbrella holding company that includes other brands such as sports content and commerce platform FanCode, its corporate venture and M&A arm Dream Capital, sports experiences platform DreamSetGo, game publisher Dream Game Studios, and payment solutions provider DreamPay.
Related Story: Blockchain-Based Fantasy Soccer Startup Sorare Scores $50M
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