Lightbox, March Gaming, and Duane Park Ventures led a $25 million (Rs 185 crore) Series A funding round for Rooter, a game streaming and e-sports platform.
In addition to IeAD Sports & Health Tech Partners, four other funds—9Unicorns, ADvantage, Capital-A, and Goal Ventures—invested in the round.
“We will use the capital in three areas: increasing user growth, creating a robust content creator ecosystem, and building a marketplace,” said Piyush, founder and chief executive of Rooter.
Rooter, founded by Piyush Kumar and Dipesh Agarwal, has emerged as the largest player in the Indian gaming category, with 8.5 million monthly active users and over 30 million downloads, making it the top app in the’sports’ category on the Google Play Store since October 2020.
Since July 2021, approximately 2.5 million streamers have joined Rooter.
Through its streamers and e-sports tournaments, the company extensively covers games such as BGMI, Free Fire, Valorant, and Call of Duty. Every month, approximately one million unique users create gaming content on the Rooter platform. “By building a base of the next 500,000 professional game streamers, we hope to emerge as the dominant player in India’s creator economy,” said Rooter CEO Piyush Kumar.
According to a report released by RedSeer and Lumikai, India is expected to be home to 700 million gamers by 2025.
“Gaming is the future of social media for the next generation. 92% of Gen Z and millennials play games. And these ‘gamers’ are more engaged, more invested and far more eager to contribute to gaming platforms than any traditional social media user today,” said Sid Talwar, partner at Lightbox.
Users of the Rooter app have spent an average of 35 minutes on the app. Approximately 3% of monthly users spend about Rs 12 per month on the app.
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