Matrix leads Series A for Indian quiz app
Zupee, a live quiz-based gaming app in India, has raised $8 million in a Series A round led by Matrix Partners India.
Other investors in the round include Falcon Edge Capital, WestCap Group, Orios Venture Partners and Smile Group.
Founded in 2018, Zupee is a gaming app where individuals compete in quiz tournaments to win pooled prizes. The amount available for each tournament is set at a pre-determined level. A free version of the app offers small sums as a reward, while the paid membership program - known as Zupee Gold - allows users to compete for larger prizes.
Zupee says it runs over 2,000 tournaments daily covering more than 100 topics. It claims that the app, available in Hindi and English, hosts 10 million gaming sessions every month. Zupee is integrated with major payment methods popular in the country and claims to have disbursed over $1.3 million in prize money so far.
“Zupee has built a truly unique mobile-gaming product that allows players to showcase their knowledge, while at the same time tap into their intrinsic need to compete with their friends and other gamers. Zupee’s strong growth in users and total gameplay is a testament to the potential of the platform," said Tarun Davda, a managing director at Matrix India in a statement.
Other apps operating in the same space include Quizistan, BrainBaazi, Jusplay, Primetime, Loco, and MobShow. Modeled after HQ Trivia, a live quiz app launched in 2017 in the US that also employed presenters, these apps seek to rapidly build a userbase that they eventually hope to monetize through in-app advertisements and subscription fees. HQ Trivia shut down earlier in the year but has recently relaunched its operations.
Recent investments by Matrix include Camp K12, an online tutoring app that teaches programming languages to school students, parking space booking platform Park+, and Toddle, a productivity platform that seeks to help school teachers. It has also participated in follow-on investments for Vogo, MoEngage, and Testbook. The latter is a test preparation app for individuals applying for public sector jobs.
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