Leading Skill-Based Gaming app Zupee raises $8M led by Matrix Partners India

8th April, 2020. New Delhi: Skill-Based Gaming company Zupee, founded by IIT Kanpur graduates Dilsher Singh Malhi and Siddhant Saurabh, announced today that it has raised USD $8 million in its Series A funding round. Matrix Partners India led this investment round with participation from Falcon Edge Capital, WestCap Group, Orios Venture Partners and Zupee's early stage investor Smile Group.

Zupee runs live quiz tournaments on its app, in which users compete with friends and other players for prizes. The Zupee app has more than 2000 live quiz tournaments running through 24 hours every day, covering over 100 topics that range from Bollywood, Hollywood and Sports to Math, Spelling and Hinglish among others.

The online gaming market is growing at 40% annually and is expected to reach a $14 billion market in India by 2025. In the last 12 months, Zupee's growth has galloped past the industry, with the app's user base and GTV growing by over 100 and 700 times respectively.

Dilsher Singh Malhi, CEO of Zupee said'‹, "Our strong growth in the last year has reaffirmed our faith in building a gaming app that combines people's love for trivia and quizzes with a chance to win real money. This is why we are thrilled to welcome marquee names like Matrix, Falcon Edge, WestCap and Orios as new investors in Zupee. We at Zupee are geared to serve 100 million users and be a leader in skill based gaming in India. We will be using the capital raised from this round to invest deeper in Technology, Team and Marketing.'

'‹Last year, Zupee announced that it had raised $1 million in seed funding from Smile Group, which incubated the startup. "Gaming is the future of entertainment and we were lucky to back Zupee's extremely talented founders in our venture builder platform. Zupee has emerged as one of the leading players in skill based gaming & we remain excited to extend our platform's support in this next phase of Zupee's growth." Harish Bahl and Manish Vij, Founder and Cofounder of Smile Group said in a joint statement.

"Zupee has built a truly unique mobile-gaming product that allows players to showcase their knowledge, while at the same time tap into their intrinsic need to compete with their friends and other gamers. India leads the world in mobile game downloads with more than 5 billion downloads in 2019. Zupee's strong growth in users and total gameplay is a testament to the potential of the platform. We are proud to partner with Dilsher & Siddhant and look forward to supporting them as they gear up to dominate the skill-based gaming market.' Said '‹Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India.

The Zupee app is currently available in both English and Hindi and has over 5 million downloads as of April 1, 2020. The app sees over 10 million gameplays every month.

About Zupee.com:
Zupee.com is an online skill based gaming app. Users can pick any topic ranging from movies to sports and academics. For more information, please visit'‹ '‹https://zupee.com/

About Matrix Partners India:
Matrix Partners India is an investment firm with approximately $1 billion under management. Founded in 2006, the firm invests in companies targeting the Indian consumer and enterprise market at the seed, early and early growth stages. Matrix India has invested in several market leading companies such as Ola (local transportation), Quikr (online classifieds), Practo (digital health platform), Dailyhunt (mobile local language platform), Treebo (digital hotel chain), Limeroad (social e-commerce platform), Mswipe (mobile POS), Five Star Business Finance (SME lending), OfBusiness (credit led B2B marketplace), Ola Electric (multimodal electric vehicle platform), Razorpay (payments), Stanza Living (tech enabled student housing platform), Vogo (scooter sharing), and Cloudnine Hospitals (leading chain of maternity hospitals), among others. Matrix India has advisory offices in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai. Matrix Partners has a global network of funds investing in the US, China and India, with approximately $5 billion under management. Further information is available at www.matrixpartners.in