Rooter Raises $1.7 mn in Pre-series A Round Led by Paytm, Partners for Esports Content

Sports content and engagement app Rooter has officially announced that it has raised $1.7 Mn in a Pre-series A round announced on May 4, 2020.

In line with the report posted on Glaws on April 24th, the investment round was led by Paytm. Other investors in this round include IeAD Sports (Adidas family backed fund), Venture Catalysts, Rockstud Capital, Founder Bank Capital (early stage arm of RB Investments), and Anthill Ventures.

Rooter is also partnering with Paytm First Games for gaming and content on cricket, fantasy sports, and esports & gaming ecosystem. This strategy will help the platform launch user monetization channels. Currently, Rooter monetizes advertisements on its website.

The funds raised will be used to grow Rooter’s user base and to capitalise on its upcoming esports & gaming content and communities.

Rooter enables users to connect through creation and consumption of personalised sports content on sports and gaming in their preferred language. It was founded in 2016 by Akshat Goel, Dipesh Agarwal, and Piyush Kumar.

Rooter has raised $2.7 million till date in over three funding rounds. It has more than 8 million users including sports enthusiasts and professionals who develop and consume content.

As per a report in MediaNews4U, commenting on the funding, Piyush Kumar, Founder and CEO of Rooter said, “We started Rooter with the objective of creating a sports fan community and we are glad our pivot to content has found a strong product-market fit. Our engagement metrics and user growth have been excellent in the last two quarters. We are excited to onboard Paytm, who aside from their investment, will also integrate Rooter into Paytm and Paytm First Games while we will work with them to be the biggest source of user content in sports and gaming. We also welcome Rockstud Capital and Founder Bank Capital as investors in Rooter.”

Talking about the content collaboration, Sudhanshu Gupta, COO Paytm First Games said, “We continue to grow our content offerings through gaming and the addition of Rooter’s communities and user-generated content will further enhance the use cases available on our platform. In the coming months, we will add more interactive content around Fantasy sports, Esports, and games while bringing benefits of the Paytm ecosystem to Rooter.”