Dream Capital leads $120m Series A for India cricket NFT platform
Dream Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of India fantasy sports platform operator Dream Sports, has led a USD 120m Series A for Rario, a specialist in cricket-themed non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Alpha Wave Global also came into the round as a new backer. It joins an investor roster that includes Animoca Brands, which focuses on NFTs for gaming, Presight Capital, and Kingsway Capital.
Founded by Ankit Wadhwa and Sunny Bhanot, alumni of the India Institute of Technology – Delhi, Rario claims to run the world’s first cricket NFT platform with the largest share of cricket NFT rights globally. It allows cricket fans to collect, trade and play with officially licensed NFTs on the blockchain. Digital collectables include player cards, video moments, and cricket artefacts.
The company has partnerships with Cricket Australia and the Australian Cricketers’ Association as well as the Caribbean Premier League, Lanka Premier League, Abu Dhabi T10 League, and Legends League Cricket. In addition, it works with more than 900 individual cricketers, including Virender Sehwag, Zaheer Khan, Rishabh Pant, Faf Du Plessis, Aaron Finch, and Jason Holder.
Rario will now get access to Dream Sports’ 140m users, who will be able to trade NFTs through fiat-only channels such as credit cards, debit cards, and bank transfers. Since 2021, the company has sold over 50,000 NFTs across 20 countries. The US, UK, Australia, and India represent its top four markets.
Rario is not alone in targeting cricket NFTs in India. Earlier this year, Insight Partners led a USD 100m Series A round for FanCraze, which has its own partnerships with cricket associations, leagues, and players. The start-up released videos of 75 notable cricketing moments as NFTs in January. Owners can build collections or trade NFTs on FanCraze’s marketplace.
“Dream Capital is glad to partner with Rario to help sports fans engage deeper with their favourite players and teams. Web3 use cases in sports are transformational, and we are looking to back more start-ups in the space globally with innovative utilities of NFTs,” Dev Bajaj, chief strategy officer of Dream Sports, said in a statement.
Dream Sports is best known for Dream11, which offers online fantasy sports leagues across cricket, football, kabaddi, basketball, hockey, volleyball, baseball, and handball. The company has raised substantial PE funding, most recently a USD 840m round at a valuation of USD 8bn. Dream Capital was established last year with a USD 250m corpus. It has made nine investments to date.
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