FanClash secures $40 million from Alpha Wave, Sequoia, Info Edge, Polygon

Esports fantasy platform FanClash on June 17 announced that it has raised $40 million Series B funding from existing investors Alpha Wave Ventures (previously Falcon Edge), Sequoia India, Info Edge India and new investor Polygon (Matic Networks), as esports sees increasing popularity among consumers in the country.

This brings the startup's total financing to about $50 million, including a $10 million Series A funding in August 2021.

Founded in mid-2020 by Richa Singh and Rishabh Bhansali, FanClash aims to bring the fantasy sports format to the esports segment, allowing users to build fantasy teams of professional gamers across several popular titles such as PUBG (PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds) Mobile, FreeFire, Call Of Duty Mobile, Valorant, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), League of Legends, and DOTA 2, and compete with one another in global tournaments. They can win real money based on the real life performance of the teams.

In a sense, it is similar to a score of online platforms that offer fantasy sports such as Dream11 and Mobile Premier League, except that these platforms focus on traditional sports such as cricket while FanClash focuses only on esports.

FanClash launched its app in India in 2021 and forayed into the Philippines in June 2022. In a statement, it said it plans to use the funds raised for its global expansion plans as well as user acquisition and boosting its team. The startup plans to launch in Vietnam and the United States by early 2023.

Bhansali said in a statement that esports fans around the world spend about 8-10 hours a week watching tournaments and gameplay, but there are not enough avenues for players and viewers to monetise their knowledge in any way.

"We aspire to be a household name in the global gaming community. This is possible in esports, unlike traditional sports, because the underlying game titles have a global audience," said Singh.

Similar to other real money games, FanClash is not available on Google Play Store or Apple App Store and one can download the app from FanClash website. The startup claims to have over 200,000 active users and clocked more than two million downloads so far. It also claims to have distributed winnings of over Rs 50 crore so far.

Rajan Anandan, managing director of Sequoia India, said: "Online gaming has over 300 million users in India and esports has hit an inflection point with over 100 million Indian viewers. The online gaming market is also monetising well and is on track to surpass $5 billion in revenues by 2025. Going after this opportunity, FanClash is building an exciting new destination for esports fans with an incredible product that is loved by its users."

"Esports have proven to be the next step in the evolution of the gaming industry. This is a global market which still has massive unsolved problems around fantasy as well as fan engagement," said Anirudh Singh, managing director of Alpha Wave Global which is also one of the major backers of Dream11.

"Using data as a moat, we were very impressed with the way FanClash has built out its gaming platform for global markets. The company has also shown its execution strength across all international markets, while maintaining high capital efficiency - reflected in the industry leading metrics like LTV/CAC," Singh said.

Singh had previously co-founded beauty services marketplace BigStylist which had receiving backing from Info Edge.

"The execution since Day 1 has been phenomenal with FanClash becoming a category leader within two years of inception. They have been extremely capital efficient and are seeing strong user love which reflects in the superior engagement and retention of users on the platform. Esports is a large and growing market globally and Fanclash with its global ambitions is well positioned to become the global leader in esports fantasy," said Kitty Agarwal, partner at Info Edge Venture Fund.