Rooter Signs Up Biggest eSports Deal With Godlike, as a Part of Their 100 Cr Investment in Indian eSports Industry

GodLike moves from Loco to Rooter, making it a deal stated to be the biggest in Indian esports market

From stepping into India’s game streaming arena two years ago to becoming the biggest game and esports streaming platform, Rooter has unfurled a massive wave in India’s eSports landscape, in a flash. The platform is now taking a major leap by signing the country biggest deal with the country’s most prominent and powerful eSports team GodLike. The partnership deal provides Rooter exclusive live streaming rights for GodLike’s BGMI, Free Fire, CODM, and new forms of live gaming content. This partnership is stated to be the biggest eSports deal in India’s history.

The partnership between the two entities will not be limited to game streaming, as Rooter will also serve as a sponsor for GodLike in all the upcoming tournaments and events. Fans can catch the currently active content creators from GodLike on Rooter. They currently include, ‘Jonathan’ Amaral, Abhijeet ‘Ghatak’ Andhare, Abhishek ‘ZGOD’ Choudhary, Vivek ‘ClutchGod’ Horo, Suraj ‘Neyoo’ Majumdar, and Ashpreet ‘Gill’ Singh. All these streamers will now exclusively be seen streaming live streams on Rooter, as a part of this collaboration.

 Dipesh Agarwal, Co-Founder & COO, Rooter shared his excitement around the partnership stating, “GodLike is one of the most popular teams in the Indian eSports ecosystem and we foresee building a long-term relationship with them. Having their roster of professional gamers as part of our massive community will give the fans tons of exclusive content and a chance to interact with their favourite streamers. This is the biggest deal ever signed in India’s esports ecosystem, and by joining forces with GodLike, we look forward to building an enormous and competitive community of streamers and influencers on our platform.”

Amar Sanjay Chandgude, Director, Godlike esports said, “We are thrilled to partner with the country’s most popular game streaming platform. The speed of innovation and the incredible gaming experience Rooter offers reaffirms its commitment to scale eSports in India. GODLIKE ESPORTS is known for exploring and nurturing gaming talent across India. They have created India's leading teams in BGMI, FREE FIRE AND CODM. The team is on a mission to build the most successful eSports ecosystem the world has ever witnessed.”

The eSports market size in India, although is at a nascent stage, has quickly scaled to INR 3 billion in FY2021. A recent report released by EY stated that the market is expected to reach INR 11 billion by FY2025. However, esports has a much more significant economic impact and the potential to generate an economic value of around INR 100 billion between now and FY2025. Rooter aims to capture this opportunity by teaming up with prominent eSports teams and emerging as a lubricant in making India a global gaming powerhouse.

About Rooter

Founded in 2016 by Piyush Kumar and Dipesh Agarwal, Rooter has quickly grown to become the largest game streaming platform in India. In January 2022, the company announced that it had raised $25 million in its series A funding round led by Lightbox, March Gaming, and Duane Park Ventures. In December 2021, the streaming platform roped in renowned Indian cricketers Yuzvendra Chahal and Riyan Parag who streams exclusively on the platform. The company also teamed up with Team Orange Rock, Orangutan and Revenge Esports. Recently, it has also bagged an exclusive media right deal for South Asia's biggest esports tournament organizer, Skyesports.

Sports Community Platform Rooter Raises $1.7 Mn led by Paytm, leAD Sports, Rockstud Capital and Founder Bank Capital

ndia’s biggest sports community platform, Rooter, has raised a Pre-series A round of $1.7 mn. The key investors in this round include India's leading financial services platform Paytm, leAD Sports- Adidas Family backed Fund, Rockstud Capital, and Founder Bank Capital- early stage arm of RB Investments. Anthill Ventures, Venture Catalysts, and a few more current angel investors also participated in the round.

Rooter is also entering into a strategic partnership with Paytm First Games where both companies will collaborate to grow the Cricket, Fantasy Sports, Esports and Gaming ecosystem by creating seamless integration across gaming and content.

The fresh round of funding will be used to grow Rooter’s user base over the next one year and capitalizing on the company’s upcoming Esports & gaming content and communities. This will add a new dimension to the unique positioning of Rooter which already has a very high engagement around its sports content. The new content strategy will also allow Rooter to launch user monetization channels, in addition to current advertising monetization, with gifting economy working very well for many content-based startups in the country.

Rooter, which literally means a Sports Fan, was founded by Piyush and Dipesh Agarwal in 2016. Its core objective is to connect fans with each other, thereby building a strong community. The platform was largely built around Live Sports Gaming during its early days before it pivoted to content in 2019. Today, it has cemented its stance as the only Indian Sports Platform, which comprises sports content developed by users and professionals with a user base of more than 8 million.

Rooter is also the only Indian Sports start-up to ever get selected by leAD Sports Accelerator amongst more than 220 companies that applied from India so far. The brand completed the program in 2018 and later secured its first funding from leAD in 2019. Rooter has raised over a million dollars in funding so far through Venture Catalysts, Bollywood actor Boman Irani, Anthill ventures, and other marquee investors.

Commenting on the development, Piyush, Founder and CEO of Rooter, said, “We started Rooter with the objective of creating a sports fan community and we are glad our pivot to content has found a strong product-market fit. Our engagement metrics and user growth have been excellent in the last two quarters. We are excited to onboard Paytm, who aside from their investment, will also integrate Rooter into Paytm and Paytm First Games while we will work with them to be the biggest source of user content in sports and gaming. We also welcome Rockstud Capital and Founder Bank Capital as investors in Rooter.”

Sudhanshu Gupta, COO Paytm First Games said, "We continue to grow our content offerings through gaming and the addition of Rooter's communities and user-generated content will further enhance the use cases available on our platform. In the coming months, we will add more interactive content around Fantasy sports, Esports, and games while bringing benefits of the Paytm ecosystem to Rooter."

Rockstud Capital Investment Fund is a SEBI-registered Cat-II AIF that invests in listed equities as well as startups at Pre-Series A stage. Their investments include Everest Fleet, Cubical Labs & Noida-based Smartvizx. New Delhi based Ahlawat and Associates are the legal counsel for Rooter on this deal.

About Rooter:

Rooter is India's biggest Sports Community Platform that is Personalizing Sports Content and giving a voice to millions of fans across sports and gaming. Rooter engages fans with User Generated Live Audio and Video content over different sports and offers a personalized sports feed consisting of videos, images, polls etc & Scorecards in 10 Indian languages covering Cricket, Football, and multiple other sports. Rooter was started in 2016 by Piyush and Dipesh Agarwal and have raised funds from IeAD Fund, Venture Catalysts, Anthill Ventures, Boman Irani and a number of angel investors.

About Paytm First Games:
Paytm First Games is India's fastest-growing gaming destination and has become a popular option for stay-at-home entertainment with its games like Ludo and Rummy registering 4x growth. The gaming app has more than half a million daily active gamers on the platform spending between 32 to 45 minutes playing more than 100+ games. The app offers free to play casual games across racing, action, shooting, arcade among others.

Sports Engagement Platform Rooter Raises Seed Round from Intex Technologies

Rooter, a digital platform that connects, engages and helps sports audiences interact with each other on a real-time basis during sports events, has raised an undisclosed amount of funds from Intex, one of India’s fastest growing consumer electronic goods and accessories manufacturer. The sports social engagement app earlier successfully raised funds from Dhruv Chitgopekar and Prantik Dasgupta. It also holds the distinction of being the first venture that Bollywood star, Boman Irani, has invested in as an angel investor.

The freshly infused capital will be utilized to strengthen the tech team at Rooter, all the while maintaining a lean structure. It aims to also add more numbers to its Sales and Marketing team as well as to the content division to bolster the vernacular versions of the app. This round of funding will, in addition, help accelerate the platform’s expansion into South East Asian markets and catalyze partnerships with sports teams and leagues all around the world. Rooter’s ambition to carry out merchandizing activities and possibly fan-player interactions will also get a boost besides allowing it to leverage the superlative tech infrastructure of Intex.

Rooter has been identified as one of the most unique ideas to emerge out of the Indian start-up ecosystem, with no pre-existing business model to follow anywhere in the world. With its user engagement features such as live-match prediction, quizzes, and chat forums becoming extremely popular with users, Rooter’s audience base and the time spent by an average user on the app has increased significantly. With the approaching sports season, Rooter hopes to far exceed the 50000+ downloads it currently sits on, and aims to cross half a million downloads by the end of the IPL. Rooter will benefit from the state-of-the-art technological setup of Intex, access to which can help reduce Rooter’s R&D costs. The ready database of Intex will also be a goldmine for Rooter to find new users.

Commenting on the funding, Piyush, Founder & CEO, Rooter, said, “It gives us immense pleasure to receive funding from Intex, one of the most successful Indian IT devices and accessories manufacturers. Rooter is essentially a tech-based platform and we wanted to have an investor on board who could also be our strategic partner and help us evolve our product to fully realize it’s potential. Intex’s deep understanding of the smartphone world and its popularity in Tier-2 and 3 cities of India will help us to promote and develop Rooter’s unique idea further, optimizing it to perfectly fit the needs of smartphone users everywhere.”

Intex has had a thriving association with sports, and its director, Keshav Bansal, is the youngest franchise owner in the history of IPL. In January this year, Intex also owned the Gujarat Warriors in Super Fight League, foraying into the comparatively unknown world of MMA fighting in India.

Keshav Bansal, Spokesperson Intex, commented on the collaboration by saying, “Rooter has a great fundamental idea, and its recent numbers suggest that its popularity is zooming by the day. As sports are an extremely emotion-driven phenomenon and the sports fan engagement platform is a completely uncharted territory, Rooter has limitless scope for growth. We feel this collaboration will be a perfect synergistic match and will enable sports’ fans to enjoy their favourite games like never before.”

The average time spent by a user on Rooter has gone up from 2-3 minutes in September last year to 13-15 minutes currently. The number of daily active users is also growing at a brisk pace, with Rooter looking to engage more than 20,000 daily active users by the time IPL starts. This increased audience engagement, coupled with a growing list of different kinds of sports being incorporated into the app, has endeared Rooter to its target users and has boosted its attempt to revolutionize the sports viewing experience in India, and the rest of the world.

The deal was enabled by Kwan Entertainment & Marketing Solutions and Uday Ahlawat, Partner at Ahlawat and Associates, was the legal advisor for Rooter.