Live sports engagement platform, Rooter has raised $1.7 million during its pre- Series A funding round. The round saw investments from renowned names like Paytm, leAD Sports, Rockstud capital which is backed by Adidas family and Founder Bank Capital with Anthill Ventures, Venture Catalyst and a few other individual investors.
The investment from this round will be used by Rooter to increase its user base in a year and capitalizing on company’s new ventures like esports, gaming content and communities. They plan to launch user monetization channel as an addition to current advertisement monetization channel. They will be following the trend of gifting economy as it is working well for content-based startup.
Rooter has tied up with Paytm First Games to grow the Cricket, Fantasy Sports, Esports and Gaming ecosystem in the country. They are planning to work on this by creating integration across gaming content. Piyush and Dipesh Agarwal laid the foundation of Rooter in 2016 with initial idea of connecting fans with each other. It started off as live sports gaming and in 2019, was pivoted into content. Rooters has reached an audience of eight million with content from professionals and users.
The startup is the first Indian firm to get selected by leAD Sports Accelerator out of 220 companies that applied. Rooter has raised over a million dollars from investors including Bollywood star, Boman Irani. The company has seen an immense growth in last two semesters and its deal with Paytm First Games will only get it bigger.