India gaming platform secures $90m Series C

The company, which claims to be the largest e-sports and mobile gaming business in Asia, has now raised $130.5 million to date. Existing investors that re-upped in the Series C include Sequoia Capital India, Go-Ventures, and Base Partners.

MPL was established in 2018 by Sai Srinivas and Shubh Malhotra, who earlier co-founded Creo, a consumer electronics manufacturer that was sold to Hike Messenger in 2017. It has released more than 70 games on its platform through partnerships with developers and studios, and it boasts over 60 million users. The platform has recorded more than two billion cash transactions via its app.

World Cricket Championship (WCC) is among MPL’s most popular titles. Marketing efforts include signing up Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli as a brand ambassador and sponsoring two teams in the Indian Premier League. In addition to WCC, which offers daily cash prizes to competitors, MPL offers casual, arcade, and fantasy league games.

The company began negotiations with investors over a new funding round in January. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit India in March, MPL has grown fourfold. The number of games played across its most popular titles has increased by more than 700% in the last four months alone.

The new funding will help MPL consolidate its dominant market position, expand its product offering, and add to its 300-strong team, currently based in Bengaluru, Jakarta, and Pune. Specific product development initiatives include social functions such as live streaming and audio and video content features.

“Gaming has been one of the largest growing entertainment industries in the world, and we believe that mobile games have contributed to the major growth of this industry, especially in Asia,” said Winston Adi, head of investments at MDI Ventures, in a statement. "We are proud of what innovation MPL has to offer as they delivered competitive gaming to scale, and the result has been mind-blowing."

MPL claims India is among the top five gaming markets globally with approximately 300 million gamers. According to a 2019 report by KPMG and the Federation of Indian Fantasy Sports (FIFS), online gaming revenues in the country reached INR43.8 billion in 2018, having nearly doubled over the prior four years. The market is expected to be worth INR118.8 billion by 2023.

Within e-sports, the audience is tipped to hit 20 million by 2021, up from four million in 2017. Meanwhile, fantasy sports users in India are projected to number 100 million this year, up from 50 million in February 2019. The number of platform providers grew sevenfold between 2016 and 2018 with the user base growing 25-fold.

Last week, Dream Sports, operator of India’s largest fantasy sports platform, reportedly achieved a $2.5 billion valuation following a $225 million funding round. Its backers include TPG – acting through its tech adjacencies strategy – Tiger Global Management, ChrysCapital Partners, and Footpath Ventures.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Technology
• Consumer
• Media
• Expansion
• India
• TMT
• Growth capital
• SIG
• RTP Global
• MDI Ventures