- Paytm First Games, a real-money gaming platform, has announced its entry into Indian esports in partnership with Supercell.
- The company is a joint venture between Alibaba Group’s AG Holdings and One97 Communications.
- The platform claims to have added 75K new users daily in March.
Indian real-money gaming platform Paytm First Games (PFG) has partnered with Supercell to announce a Clash Royale tournament in India.
The tournament marks PFG’s first foray into the Indian esports space. Up to 512 teams will compete online in a single-elimination format from April 10 – 12, for a prize pool of INR 400K ($5K USD). The final rounds of the tournament will be livestreamed on YouTube and Paytm Inbox (a messaging service on the Paytm app).
PFG is a joint venture between Alibaba Group’s AGTech and Paytm, an Indian e-commerce payment system. It claims to have over 500K daily active gamers who spend anywhere between 30 – 45 minutes on the platform. It also claims to have grown by 200% over the last month, adding more than 75K new users daily. In November 2019, One97 Communications Limited (the company that owns Paytm) received an investment of $1B through a round led by US-based asset management firm T Rowe Price. This valued it at $16B, reportedly making it India’s most valuable internet startup with previous investments from marquee investors such as the Alibaba Group, Softbank and Berkshire Hathaway.
In January, another real money gaming platform, Mobile Premier League (MPL), had announced its entry into the Indian esports space through a partnership with SoStronk that enabled users to play casual competitions on its platform for PUBG MOBILE, Garena Free Fire, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
