Smile Incubated Zupee Raises $10 Mn The company's userbase has grown 100-times in the last 12 months
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Skill-based gaming app Zupee, one of venture building platform Smile's portfolio companies, has raised $10 million in a funding round led by WestCap Group. This is the second round of funding secured by Zupee within the last nine months.
It has raised a total of $18 million from Matrix Partners, WestCap, Smile, FalconEdge, and Orios. The company was incubated by Smile in 2019.
The platform places mission-like importance on bringing positive and engaging experiences to its users.
"We have driven an exponential month-on-month growth this year. This fresh round of funding enables us to double down on our scaling efforts. We remain committed to keeping delivering a fantastic user experience for our rapidly expanding user community. Bringing joy and making each moment count is what truly propels us forward in doing our bit towards bringing the next billion online- solving for connectivity, local language content, culture and keeping the internet a place for a productive engagement," said Dilsher Singh, founder, and chief executive officer, Zupee.
Founded in 2018 by IIT-Kanpur graduates, Dilsher Singh Malhi and Siddhant Saurabh, Zupee enables users to play live quiz tournaments on their smartphone devices. Running 24x7, Zupee Gold has over 2,000 live quizzes covering a broad range of topics from Bollywood, Hollywood, sports, math, spelling, and Hinglish. The company's user base has grown 100-times in the last 12 months.
"The Zupee team has shown outstanding competencies in building and executing a world-class skill-based gaming platform that mobile users in India love and keep going back to. Their industry-leading growth this year is a testament to their strengths, and we are delighted to partner them in their growth story as they scale up," said WestCap Group.
Smile has partnered with AirBnB, Twitter, Snapchat, and Yahoo, among others.
"India continues to be one of the largest markets for mobile gaming in the world, we believe that Zupee is positioned well to become the market leader in the skill-based gaming space. We are delighted to partner with them and have a ringside view of their astonishing growth journey. They have shown great maturity and sagacity in their approach towards business and we feel thrilled to see them making great strides especially in a post-COVID world where they have emerged even stronger, more relevant, and truly resilient," said Harish Bahl and Manish Vij, founder and co-founder, Smile, in a joint statement.
India leads the world in mobile game downloads with more than 5 billion downloads in 2019. The online gaming market is growing at 40 per cent annually and is expected to reach a $14 billion market in India by 2025.
