Dream Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of Dream Sports, is in advanced talks to lead a $100 million round of funding in cricket-focused non-fungible token (NFT) startup Rario.
First reported by ET citing three sources, if this deal goes through, it would be one of the largest investments in the NFT sector in India. It would also be Dream Capital’s maiden bet in the Web3 space.
RARIO | Unleashing The Non-fungible Token Revolution
Founded in 2021 by Sunny Bhanot and Ankit Wadhwa, Rario is a digital collectibles marketplace for cricket that allows users to buy, sell and trade officially licensed cricket NFTs.
The startup has procured NFT rights to five international leagues and almost 600 international cricketers through its various partnerships, allowing the NFT startup to create digital player cards like trump cards that could be potentially linked to games and applications.
Launched amid the global boom in NFTs and cryptocurrency, Rario had raised an undisclosed sum from investors, including Presight Capital and Kingsway Capital, last year. Since its inception, Rario has seen traction from buyers based in 19 countries and has minted and sold 50,000 NFTs so far on its platform.
According to sources, Rario and Dream Sports are exploring more partnerships. Additionally, the investment will allow Dream Sports to create utilities on the rights Rario has acquired.
Dream Sports | Sports Technology Giant
In August last year, Dream Sports, the parent company of online fantasy gaming startup Dream11, set up a venture arm with a corpus of $250 million that would invest in gaming, sports, and fitness-tech startups. The same month, Dream Sports acquired Rolocule Games, a Pune-based mobile games developer, which would be rebranded as Dream Game Studios.
Speaking at a virtual event – NFTIndia, Harsh Jain, Co-founder and CEO of Dream11 & Dream Sports, said,
“Dream Sports will be entering the Web3 and NFT space in a big way and is looking for talent with whom we can build the entire NFT sector in India together.”
Dream Sports is a leading sports technology company with brands such as Dream11, Dream Capital, DreamX (a sports accelerator), DreamSetGo (a sports experiences platform, DreamPay (a payment solutions provider), and FanCode (a premier digital sports platform that personalizes content and commerce for all sports fans).
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