Mentioned in this article
- Indian esports organization Global Esports announces seed funding deal with Venture Catalysts.
- Amount and dilution details are undisclosed with the deal size reported to be in the multi-million dollar range.
- Global Esports operates in multiple areas of the esports industry including teams, content creation, tournaments/events, and merchandise sales.
India-based esports organization Global Esports (GE) has raised an undisclosed amount in a multi-million dollar seed funding round by Venture Catalysts.
Founded by Rushindra Sinha and Mohit Israney, GE is an esports organization that operates in multiple areas of the industry including owning teams, creating content, organizing tournaments, events, and merchandise sales. The organization owns teams in Overwatch, Fortnite, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), Dota 2, PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG), Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege, Apex Legends, and PUBG Mobile. Additionally, GE owns and runs the Indian team for the Overwatch World Cup and earlier in July, the organization had signed a contract with India-based talent agency CAA KWAN.
Over 70% of GE’s revenue currently comes from prize winnings via tournaments that its teams compete in, while the remainder comes from content and media (2%), sponsorships (4%), merchandise sales (3%), and other interests (21%).
In a release about the deal, Rushindra Sinha, co-founder of Global Esports said, “We’re extremely proud to announce that we’re the first Indian Esports company to have raised a funding in this space. Our endeavor has always been to showcase the depth and expertise of Esports present in the Indian audiences. This investment from Vcats is a move in this direction and is bringing us closer to our goal of putting India on the Esports global map. India is in its very nascent phase and we are perfectly poised to shape and mould the future of Esports in India for generations to come and we wish to really develop the space at a grassroots level in India while slowly establishing dominance in both Asia and the rest of the world.”
Speaking about the deal and the future of esports in India, Anuj Golecha, co-founder of Venture Catalysts said, “Globally, esports has seen immense funding pumped in and it’s just the right time to see the same trend in India. We at Vcats see immense potential in the Esports space and are hoping this move opens up the entire ecosystem of Esports and gaming content in India.”
Over the last 12 months, established global companies such as ESL and DreamHack have made investments and/or organized tournaments in the country. The domestic PUBG Mobile scene has witnessed a meteoric rise in the recent past with reports suggesting that the game has over 50M players in the country. Additional revenue streams are being unlocked for companies in the region with media rights deals for esports content with streaming/broadcast services such as Hotstar, Voot, and SonyLIV becoming regular occurrences.
Previous investments in Indian esports companies include Japan’s GameWith investing in esports platform company GamingMonk (2019), an acquisition of an esports tournament organizer NODWIN Gaming by Nazara Technologies (2018) followed by an investment by NODWIN Gaming and SMAAASH Innovations into Mumbai based esports content and news media startup AFK Gaming (2018).
Disclosure: NODWIN Gaming is a minority investor in and a client of AFK Gaming.
Nishant Patel is a writer for and the co-founder of AFK Gaming.
