Exclusive: Ashneer Grover’s Third Unicorn forays into fantasy sports with CrickPe

Third Unicorn, a new venture floated by former BharatPe co-founder and MD Ashneer Grover and his wife Madhuri Jain, is targeting the fantasy sports genre with a new app called CrickPe, according to two people aware of the development.

“The company has been working on the app for the past four months and has decided to launch it in the next few weeks,” said one of the sources on the condition of anonymity. “The app is in closed beta mode and will soon open to the public.”

Entrackr visited the CrickPe website that shows it’s a fantasy sports website for cricket fans and also an image of Grover, which looks computer-generated. But the website itself seems incomplete or a dummy version: it has placeholders under the names of founders, and other details. Due to these reasons, Entrackr is unable to verify if this is in fact the website for Grover’s new venture. 

Grover did not respond to WhatsApp messages or calls from Entrackr seeking  comment for this story.

Last month, Grover unveiled a few details about Third Unicorn via a LinkedIn post. According to him, Third Unicorn has been quietly building a “market shaking” business which is “bootstrapped” and “without limelight.” The post further said it will not use any VC capital and cap their employee number at 50.

Recently, Aseem Ghavri, who has also joined Third Unicorn as co-founder, said that the new venture will be in the B2C space. According to Ghavri, the company has already hired a few employees. 

Grover, who has been in the media for his outspoken statements, has rarely been out of the limelight in the past year, thanks to his appearance as a shark in season 1 of Shark Tank in India, and his very public tussle with the BharatPe board before his ejection. He has sought to build on his new found ‘fame’ with a book he churned out since, besides the announcement of the new venture Third Unicorn. 

While the new venture is still in beta mode, it will be interesting to see how it comes out in front of already established cricket fantasy apps. ShareChat had to fire more than 100 employees when it decided to shut down its fantasy sports platform Jeet11.

With CrickPe, going by the information available, Grover is clearly trying a combination of generous rewards and clever marketing to build traction, by seeking to have cricketers associate with the platform for the ‘rewards’ it plans to earmark for them. It’s an audacious gambit to disrupt the status quo, with what we believe a low chance of success, at least as far as involving top cricketers goes. Unlike many of the firms on Shark Tank, most cricketers are well advised, and aware of the value their association will bring to any platform.