Fantasy-gaming platform Fanspole Online Solutions Pvt. Ltd said Thursday it has raised a pre-seed funding round led by early-stage venture capital firm Better Capital.
The startup said in a statement it will use the funds for product development and marketing purposes. It did not furnish financial details.
Fanspole was founded in 2015 by Aniket Shinde and Hardik Gondaliya, who are both graduates of Mumbai’s DJ Sanghvi College of Engineering.
The startup's fantasy-sports app helps anyone create contests and play together with their friends and family. It aims to create a highly engaged online community of people and extend their connection to their so-called "fans". Its platform currently supports games such as cricket, football, PubG, Call of Duty and Free Fire.
Shinde said India has a market of more than 300 million sports viewers and the startup considers each viewer as a potential fan.
Better Capital founder and chief executive officer Vaibhav Domkundwar said engagement around sports as well as e-sports happens when users go beyond watching, and the Fanspole platform is exactly what was missing.
Better Capital’s recent bets include investments in ed-tech startup Teachmint, document-focussed artificial intelligence startup DocSumo, neo-bank Walrus and artificial intelligence-based startup Inspektlabs.
The past weeks have seen a slew of investments in gaming startups.
This week itself, week multi-game platform Gamezop has raised $4.3 million and rummy-focussed gaming platform RummyBaazi.com pulled in seed funding.
Earlier this month, New Delhi-based Lumikai said it had floated and hit the first close of an early-stage fund to back local gaming and interactive media companies.
In July, mobile game development studio Firescore Interactive Pvt. Ltd raised $500,000 in a funding round led by multinational studio and publisher CrazyLabs.
Digital content, gaming and technology platform JetSynthesys Pvt. Ltd raised around $40 million last month from investors including the family offices of Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan.
