Exclusive: Zupee bags Rs 70 Cr fresh round at Rs 740 Cr valuation

Online gaming startup Zupee has raised Rs 70.09 crore in a fresh round led by existing investors Matrix Partners and West Cap. This is the second infusion by existing investors in the firm that runs live quiz tournaments on its app where users compete for cash prizes.

Zupee’s parent entity has allotted 2,689 series A1 preference shares at an issue price of Rs.260,666 pers share to raise the above mentioned sum, regulatory filings show.

While West Cap has picked up 2,264 shares for Rs 59.02 crore, Matrix Partners has acquired 425 fresh shares by investing Rs 11.07 crore. Promoters have diluted their shareholding from 33.84% to 29.7% in this round.

Post this infusion, West Cap has increased its holding to 16.9%, while Matrix now holds 11.54% stake in the Gurugram-based company.

Fintrackr’s estimate shows that Zupee has been valued Rs 740 crore in the current round. This is almost a 3.2X jump in the company’s valuation from its Series A funding. It was valued at Rs 232 crore at that time.

In April last year, Zupee had raised an $8 million Series A round led by Matrix Partners. Falcon Edge Capital, WestCap Group and Orios Venture Partners also participated in Series A financing. The company was incubated by Smile Group that invested $1 million seed capital in 2019.

According to Zupee’s website, the app runs over 1,000 quizzes across genres such as Bollywood, Math, sports, spelling, among others. It claims to have disbursed over Rs 100 crore worth cash prizes to more than 500K winners. 

Since the app offers cash prizes, Zupee’s app is distributed through the Android application package or APK. Google doesn’t allow the listing of apps that involve cash prizes on the Play Store. Dream11 and Mobile Premiere Game or MPL’s distribution channel are the same.

Lately, online gaming startups have been witnessing increased interest from venture capitals, strategic investors and private equity firms. While MPL had raised a $90 million round led by SIG, Dream11’s valuation soared to $2.5 billion with an infusion of $225 million from Tiger Global, TPG Tech Adjacencies, Chrys Capital, and FootPath Ventures. 

Vernacular real money gaming platform WinZO Games also raised Rs 133 crore in Series B round in September last year. The firm was valued close to Rs 320 crore in the second institutional round.