Zupee raises $8 million in Series A funding led by Matrix Partners

NEW DELHI: Online gaming company Zupee on Wednesday said it has raised $8 million in a Series A funding round.

Matrix Partners India led the investment round with participation from Falcon Edge Capital, WestCap Group, Orios Venture Partners and Zupee’s early stage investor Smile Group.

Founded by two IIT Kanpur graduates, Zupee runs live quiz tournaments on its app, in which users competing with others for prizes.

The Zupee app has more than 2,000 live quiz tournaments running through the day every day, covering over 100 topics that range from Bollywood, Hollywood, and Sports to Maths, Spelling, and Hinglish among others.

The online gaming market is growing at 40% annually and is expected to touch $14 billion in India by 2025.

“Our strong growth in last year has reaffirmed our faith in building a gaming app that combines people’s love for trivia and quizzes with a chance to win real money. This is why we are thrilled to welcome marquee names like Matrix, Falcon Edge, WestCap and Orios as new investors in Zupee. We at Zupee are geared to serve 100 million users and be a leader in skill based gaming in India. We will be using the capital raised from this round to invest deeper in technology, team and marketing," said Dilsher Singh Malhi, chief executive of Zupee.

Last year, Zupee had raised $1 million in seed funding from Smile Group, which incubated the startup.

“Zupee has built a truly unique mobile-gaming product that allows players to showcase their knowledge, while at the same time tap into their intrinsic need to compete with their friends and other gamers. India leads the world in mobile game downloads with more than 5B downloads in 2019. Zupee’s strong growth in users and total game play is a testament to the potential of the platform,” said Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India.

Available in both English and Hindi, the Zupee app had over 5 million downloads as of 1 April, 2020, and has clocked over 10 million game plays in a month.