Mar 31, 2022
By: BI India BureauMulti-gaming platform Games24x7, which develops casual games like RummyCircle and fantasy sports website My11Circle, has joined Dream11 and Mobile Premier League (MPL) in the unicorn club with its latest funding round. A unicorn, in startup parlance, is a company valued at or over a billion dollars.
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Games24x7 on Wednesday announced that it has raised $75 million in a funding round led by Malabar Investments, at a $2.5 billion valuation. Existing investors Tiger Global and Raine Group also participated in the round.
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Tiger Global first invested in Games24x7 in 2011 and Raine made their first investment in 2019. The Raine Group was the financial advisor to Games24x7 for this round.
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Games24x7 is the 14th unicorn in the first three months of 2022. It joins companies like Mamaearth, Fractal, Lead School, CredAvenue and others.
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Games24x7 will use this capital to look for investment opportunities in order to expand their business offerings. The company had made a strategic investment in CricHeroes, which allows people to score local cricket matches and broadcast scores online, last year in August.
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“Games24x7 is a pioneer in the fast-growing online gaming industry in India and has built a highly profitable business with outstanding acquisition and retention metrics. Not only that, they have continuously improved on these metrics at a great scale, which we believe is quite a remarkable feat,” Sumeet Nagar, managing director of Malabar Investments said.
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Games24x7, which was founded by Bhavin Pandya and Trivikraman Thampy in 2006, claims to have over 100 million users. The Mumbai-based company also posted a profit of ₹110 crore on a revenue of ₹1,573 crore in the fiscal year 2021.
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“This investment is a testimony not only to Games24x7’s performance but also to India’s immense potential as an online skill gaming market,” Trivikraman Thampy, cofounder and co-chief executive officer (CEO) of the company said.
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According to India Mobile Gaming Statistics in 2022 for Android, four in 100 games published on Google Play Store are made in India. The report revealed that there are over 4,889 Indian publishers on Google Play who have published over 17,545 games.
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