One97 Communications Ltd, the parent company of Paytm, has invested Rs 5 crore in sports fan engagement platform, Rooter Sports Technologies, as part of its Series A round, according to two people aware of the deal. Adidas’s family office-run leAD sports accelerator and early-stage fund Anthill Ventures also participated in this round. Founded in 2016 by Piyush and Dipesh Agarwal, Rooter Sports Technologies is a sports social community platform which allows sports fans to get access to specifically curated content in their own preferred languages. Apart from cricket, football and multiple other sports, Rooter allows gaming fans to live stream their games and also connect and share the best game videos with other gamers through voice and video features.
Rooter, at present, has close to 5 million fans who spend close to 24 minutes daily on the platform, according to its website.Rooter and Paytm did not respond to email queries. This strategic investment is in line with Paytm’s gaming arm, FirstGames, which it launched In January 2018 as a joint venture with AGTech Holdings Limited, a Chinese gaming and entertainment company. Paytm rebranded the gaming platform to FirstGames, last year.
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