Exclusive: Event trading startup Probo set to raise $25 Mn in Series A

Event trading startup Probo is all set to raise $25 million in a Series A round from new and existing investors, according to three people aware of the development. This would be the second funding round for the company in the past year. 

It had raised $2.5 million from Sequoia and Elevation Capital in March 2021.

“Fundamentum along with existing investors Sequoia and Elevation are in late-stage talks to invest $25 million in Probo. The terms of the deal have been finalised and the company may announce this in a few weeks from now,” said one of the people mentioned above requesting anonymity as talks are public.

Entrackr had exclusively reported about Probo’s potential Series A round in May.

Founded by Sachin Gupta and Ashish Garg, Probo is an event trading platform that allows users to trade their opinions on future events in various categories such as cricket, politics, football, finance, entertainment and startups. Users on the platform can put their views at a mutually agreeable price and win rewards.

According to the people cited in the beginning, the deal will value Probo at around $100-120 million. Queries sent to Probo, Sequoia, Elevation and Fundamentum did not elicit immediate responses. We’ll update the post in case they do.

Probo’s seed round investors include Kunal Shah, Kunal Bahl, Rohit Bansal, Bhavik Koladiya and Vaibhav Domkundwar.

Startups in the reward-based event trading space have been lately gathering momentum in India. In the past few months, a couple of Y Combinator-backed startups including Better Opinions and TradeX have raised funds. 

Globally, too, this segment has been picking up. Startups in the U.S. and western markets such as Kalshi, Polymarket, Bitclout and Hedgehog have created the early buzz with their funding. Kalshi scooped up a $30 million Series A round from Sequoia in February in February last year whereas Polymarket got backing from Polychain Capital and angels including Naval Ravikant and Balaji Srinivasan.

PlotX also operates in the same space with web3 platform. It recently nabbed $5 million seed round from Alpha Wave Incubation (AWI), Polygon’s co-founder Sandeep Nailwal Alan Howard, the co-founder of Brevan Howard Asset Management and others.