[Funding alert] FanPlay raises seed round from Dheeraj Jain, Anupam Mittal, Core91 Fund

FanPlay, a Delhi-based real money gaming startup, has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round from Redcliffe’s Dheeraj Jain, Anupam Mittal, Core91 Fund led by Shalin Shah, LetsVenture platform (via the 100x Entrepreneur Syndicate) and other marquee angel investors. 

The startup said the funding bolsters its position to ace the product market fit and scale its operations in the coming months.

“The days of passive consumption are over. Active participation is the new way for content consumption. Consumers don’t just watch TV or video on their phones, they want to participate. Best example is the IPL. People just don’t sit behind the TV - they play games (at times multiple) related to the match they are watching. This active participation is clear from the massive demand for products like the Hotstar’s Watch and Play or Fantasy Sports like the Dream11 and Mobile Premier League,” said Bharat Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of FanPlay.

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Founded by an IIT-ISB team, Bharat Gupta and Pritesh Kumar, FanPlay looks to create a unique proposition in Real Money Gaming (RMG) with live video integration and takes social gaming to the next level with high interaction between the hosts of the games and players.

Among the real money quiz game applications, both BaaziNow and Qureka, launched in 2018, have more than 10 million downloads each on the Play Store. FanPlay, is the latest entrant in the segment, and is looking to have over five lakh users on its app by the end of this year.

“Be it in the form of fantasy sports or mobile games, consumers are now looking for more and more immersive experience in content consumption. There’s a third version of consumption that is catching up is the quick, easy and rewarding casual games. FanPlay will capitalise on this early trend and use the evident shift in consumer preferences that we are seeing, to build an intuitive, live video based, mobile gaming product,” added Anupam Mittal, founder of Shaadi.com and marquee angel investor in startups like Ola, Druva and others.

According to Dheeraj Jain, who is very bullish on this space, the Real Money Gaming industry, growing 55 percent year on year, has seen a high interest from the investor community in the last two to three years.

“High interest in such startups can be corroborated with Dream11 recently being valued at more than $2.5 billion. Real Money Games has been established as the best and most lucrative monetisation model for the gaming industry,” he said.