Online skill-based gaming app Zupee, has announced raising of an $8 Million Series A round, led by Matrix Partners India. Zupee’s early-stage investors Smile Group, as well as Falcon Edge Capital, WestCap Group, and Orios Venture Partners also participated in the proceedings.
Founded in 2013 by the duo of Dilsher Singh Malhi and Siddhant Saurabh, Zupee runs online Q&As on a variety of topics ranging from Bollywood, Hollywood, Sports to Maths, Spellings, and Hinglish among others that users can take part in by paying a registration fee and earn real money as a prize. The fun of answering the quizzes coupled with monetary prizes has made the app famous in the online gaming scene in India.
Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India was bullish about the prospects of the online gaming scenario in India with Zupee being well placed to be a marquee player.
“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. India leads the world in mobile game downloads with more than 5B downloads in 2019. Zupee’s strong growth in users and total gameplay is a testament to the potential of the platform. We are proud to partner with Dilsher & Siddhant and look forward to supporting them as they gear up to dominate the skill-based gaming market,” he said.
The current investment builds on the $1 Million seed funding Zupee had generated last year. Speaking on the occasion, Harish Bahl and Manish Vij, Founder and Co-founder of Smile Group in a joint statement said, “Gaming is the future of entertainment and we were lucky to back Zupee’s extremely talented founders in our venture builder platform. Zupee has emerged as one of the leading players in skill-based gaming & we remain excited to extend our platform’s support in this next phase of Zupee’s growth.”
Zupee competes with a number of players in the online gaming scene in India, which is set to hit $14 billion by 2025, with a staggering annual growth of 40%. The sector is led by the likes of Dream 11, the fantasy league platform that is reportedly valued at $2.25 billion. Other prominent players include HalaPlay, SportsUnity, and LivePools, which had raised funding from Billionaire Dan Bilzerian. The Zupee app is currently available in both English and Hindi and claims over 5 million downloads as of April 1, 2020. The platform also sees over 10 million gameplays every month.
