Dream11 becomes 1st gaming Unicorn with Steadview's secondary investment

For the first time in the Indian startup ecosystem, a gaming startup has joined the Unicorn club with an estimated $1-1.5 billion valuation in a recent secondary transaction.

Dream11, a Mumbai based fantasy sports startup has executed a secondary share sale that is slated to be worth $60 million approximately. Venture Capital firm Kalaari Capital, private equity firm Multiples Alternate Asset Management, and hedge fund Think Investments - three of the company’s existing investors partially sold their stake to Steadview Capital in this deal.

The seven year old firm had been in talks with Steadview since February this year, as reported by VCCircle. The closure of these talks have more than doubled the valuation of the firm since the last investment round in April 2018. At that time, Tencent had led a $100 million round in the firm with Dreal11’s equity value standing at $500 million.

This shows tremendous growth in the company within a year. Steadview in their statement with ET also agreed upon the same saying Dream11 is “poised to be the leading sports company in India catering to everything a sportsman needs.”

To postulate this growth, the firm had seen a 260 per cent spike in the revenue to Rs 228.4 crore, compared to which the losses were limited to Rs 65 crore.

Founder and CEO of the firm, Harsh Jain expressed his joy ahead of the deal by advocating willingness to share the company’s growth with Investors or “Dreamsters” by allowing them to gain handsome returns. The double benefit attached to this secondary deal, where investors made money and the company entered an elite startup club - is a great example of mutual growth.

With this money, Jain aims to achieve 100 million user target by the end of 2019.

Jain is a University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University alumni with close connects to top Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani via his father. He along with Bhavit Seth, Bentley University alumnus had founded the startup Dream11 in 2012.

This development was reported by ET.