Dream Sports that owns online fantasy sports platform Dream11 has closed a $400 million funding round. Dream11's valuation has shot up to nearly $5 billion. The funding round was led by tech investors like TCV, D1 Capital Partners and Falcon Edge. TCV was an early investor in Netflix.
Apart from new investors like TCV, existing investors like Tiger Global, ChrysCapital, TPG Growth, Steadview Capital and Footpath Ventures also participated in this round.
The funding comes just before the new season of IPL that is likely to boost its revenue as more players are likely to engage in fantasy gaming.
Some of Dream11's early investors such as Multiples Alternate Asset Management and Kalaari Capital have sold parts of their stake in this secondary fundraise, as mentioned in a report in Times of India. Chinese tech major Tencent is still holding on to its single-digit holding.
In September 2020, Dream11 had conducted a largely secondary funding of $225 million at a valuation of $2.5 billion. In a secondary fundraising, new investors buy shares from existing investors. The money, in this case, does not go to the company.
Dream11 reached the milestone of 100 million users -- a first for a fantasy gaming firm in India. According to CEO Harsh Jain, this is the single largest investment in the Indian online gaming ecosystem. He said that they were hit during the March-June period last year but started coming back to normalcy from July onwards. "So, we are still 80 per cent (of pre-Covid-19 levels) but fantasy sports now has scaled up to a point where we have real revenue and we have just crossed 100 million users," Jain told the daily. The company had around 75 million users before the pandemic.
He said that the fact that they are only doing secondaries right now signals that they have enough growth capital internally and that they are excited to give their early-stage investors some very handsome returns.
Harsh Jain has so far ruled out plans for an initial public offering any time soon.
Also read: IPL 2020: Dream11 in talks to raise $50 million in fresh fundraising round
Also read: Dream 11 becomes India's first gaming unicorn with investment from Steadview Capital