Dream Sports, with an present consumer base of 140 million Indian sports activities followers, goals to construct a big sports activities ecosystem, together with in areas like sports activities content material, commerce, experiences, fan engagement (together with sports activities gaming and esports), Web 3.0 options, fantasy sports activities and health tech.
By Salman SH
Dream Sports, the guardian firm of fantasy gaming unicorn Dream11, on Wednesday introduced its largest-ever funding of $840 million led by Falcon Edge, DST Global, D1 Capital, Redbird Capital and Tiger Global.
The present spherical additionally noticed participation from present buyers equivalent to TPG and Footpath Ventures, making it among the many largest investments in India within the sports activities and gaming tech sector.
Dream Sports, which additionally owns and operates a number of gaming and sports activities manufacturers together with Dream Capital, FanCode, Dream11, DreamSetGo, Dream Game Studios and DreamPay, was valued at $8 billion within the present spherical. The start-up was earlier valued at $5 billion when it final raised $400 million in a funding spherical in March.
Dream Sports, with an present consumer base of 140 million Indian sports activities followers, goals to construct a big sports activities ecosystem, together with in areas like sports activities content material, commerce, experiences, fan engagement (together with sports activities gaming and esports), Web 3.0 options, fantasy sports activities and health tech.
Earlier this 12 months, Dream Sports additional strengthened its dedication to this house by saying a enterprise fund with a corpus of $250 million. The Dream Capital fund will look at impartial investments and M&As. Currently, Dream Capital has constructed an preliminary portfolio of 10 firms, largely specializing in thematic early stage investments in India, together with, Fittr, SoStronk, KheloMore and Elevar. Dream Capital is now increasing its sports activities, fan engagement and health portfolio in India and globally.
“Our imaginative and prescient and mission is to create an entrepreneur-led virtuous cycle of funding, innovation and wealth creation for all stakeholders within the sports activities ecosystem, from followers to athletes, groups and leagues. Our buyers have deep expertise in growing sports activities ecosystems globally, and we’re lucky to have their steerage to ‘Make Sports Better’ for 1 billion Indian sports activities followers,” Harsh Jain, CEO and co-founder, Dream Sports, stated in an announcement.
“We’re excited to accomplice with the Dream Sports household of their imaginative and prescient of constructing the main end-to-end sports activities tech firm in India. We’re very impressed with their customer-centric strategy, product technique and talent to strengthen connections between followers and their favorite sports activities,” added Rahul Mehta, managing accomplice at DST Global.
A homegrown firm based in 2008 by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth, Dream Sports is situated in Mumbai and employs near 1,000 workers at the moment. The firm’s newest fundraise comes amid a authorized cloud hanging over the fantasy gaming sector in India which noticed a number of states together with Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Assam, and lots of others implementing blanket ban on the sector.
However, Dream11 founders in October moved the Karnataka High Court to reverse the ban, whereas the Chennai High Court not too long ago quashed the Tamil Nadu authorities’s blanket ban on fantasy gaming, calling it a ‘sport of ability’.
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Game on: Dream Sports raises $840 million at valuation of $8 billion
