Exclusive: Decoding MPL’s secondary transaction and shareholding pattern

Amidst large funding rounds and skyrocketing valuations, secondary transactions for early investors, employees and founders have also picked up in the last year. After Zomato, Dream11 and Unacademy; Mobile Premier League or MPL has now gone through a secondary deal in which two angel investors have completely exited and its co-founder Sai Srinivas sold some of his holdings.

According to regulatory filings in Singapore, early angels Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta along with Srinivas have collectively offloaded close to $3 million worth of shares. 

Rau and Gupta have transferred shares for $1.3-1.5 million and $450K-$473K respectively to Major Platforms PTE. Srinivas has also sold some shares for nearly $1 million to the same entity. While the quantum of these exits may not be big, the two angels have scored a handsome return on their investments which was made 28 months ago and have now completely exited the company.

Rau and Gupta had invested around $49,700 and $15,400 respectively in MPL during Jan 2019.

According to Fintrackr’s estimates, Rau and Gupta have scored returns anywhere between 27 to 30X. This will be the second biggest exit of angels across India's startup ecosystem after BharatPe. The Delhi-based firm had claimed to have provided exits to angels with 80X returns.

It’s worth noting that both MPL and BharatPe were founded in the same year - 2018.

Fintrackr has also analysed MPL’s shareholding structure through a separate filing sourced from Singapore which reflects that its co-founders Srinivas and Shubham Malhotra have a collective stake of 28% in the company.

MPL’s early backer Sequoia Capital is the largest shareholder among all investors in the Bengaluru-based company which controls 26.4% stake. SIG Global, GV Games, MDI Ventures and RTP Global are the other notable stakeholders in the company with 11.3%, 5.9%, 4.5% and 4.07% stake respectively.

The investors' list also includes Moore Strategic Venture, Go Jek, RU Net and CMPL Venture and they hold less than 3% stake each. 

MPL works with third-party developers and has onboarded over 70 games on its platform. According to the company, it has 7 million users who participate in skill-based games including cricket, puzzles, chess and crossword to win cash prizes. 

The two-and-a-half-year-old company has raised around $225 million since its inception. Dream11, the largest player in fantasy sports space, has raised around $625 million and was recently valued at $5 billion during its $400 million secondary round.

Meanwhile, MPL is also in late-stage talks with new and existing backers to raise upto $150 million. DST Global may participate in the potential round which would push its valuation to $2 billion from its $945 million valuation in the previous round. 

Last month, Entrackr had exclusively reported on MPL’s potential financing round.