Sports digital platform Rooter has raised an undisclosed amount of funds from Intex, an Indian consumer electronic goods and accessories manufacturer. The freshly infused capital will be utilized to strengthen the tech team at Rooter, while maintaining a lean structure.
Launched around six months ago, the Rooter app connects, engages and helps sports audiences interact with each other on a real-time basis during sports events. With this app, founders Piyush Kumar and Soham Sinha aim to bring together people from across the world to cheer for their favorite team.
The sports social engagement app earlier successfully raised funds from Dhruv Chitgopekar, Partner at Kwan Entertainment, and Prantik Dasgupta, a corporate professional and avid sports enthusiast. Actor Boman Irani also invested in the startup as an angel investor.
With the new investment, Rooter aims to add more numbers to its Sales and Marketing team as well as to the content division to bolster the vernacular versions of the app. Furthermore, the startup plans to expand into South East Asian markets and catalyze partnerships with sports teams and leagues all around the world.
“It gives us immense pleasure to receive funding from Intex, one of the most successful Indian IT devices and accessories manufacturers. Rooter is essentially a tech-based platform and we wanted to have an investor on board who could also be our strategic partner and help us evolve our product to fully realize it’s potential,” said Piyush Kumar, Founder & CEO, Rooter.
Kumar further explained that Intex’s deep understanding of the smartphone world and its popularity in Tier-2 and 3 cities of India will help the company promote and develop its unique idea further optimizing it to perfectly fit the needs of smartphone users everywhere. He believes that Rooter’s ambition to carry out merchandizing activities and possibly fan-player interactions will also get a boost besides allowing it to leverage the tech infrastructure of Intex.
“Rooter has a great fundamental idea, and its recent numbers suggest that its popularity is zooming by the day. As sports are an extremely emotion-driven phenomenon and the sports fan engagement platform is a completely uncharted territory, Rooter has limitless scope for growth. We feel this collaboration will be a perfect synergistic match and will enable sports’ fans to enjoy their favourite games like never before,” said Keshav Bansal, Director, Intex.
Bansal is the youngest franchise owner in the history of Indian Premier League (IPL), and in January this year, Intex also owned the Gujarat Warriors in Super Fight League, foraying into the comparatively unknown world of MMA fighting in India.
Piyush Kumar and Keshav Bansal
Rooter claims that with its user engagement features such as live-match prediction, quizzes, and chat forums becoming extremely popular with users, its audience base and the time spent by an average user on the app has increased significantly. With the approaching sports season, Rooter hopes to far exceed the 50000+ downloads it currently sits on, and aims to cross half a million downloads by the end of the IPL.
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The sports social engagement app earlier successfully raised funds from Dhruv Chitgopekar, Partner at Kwan Entertainment, and Prantik Dasgupta, a corporate professional and avid sports enthusiast. Actor Boman Irani also invested in the startup as an angel investor.
With the new investment, Rooter aims to add more numbers to its Sales and Marketing team as well as to the content division to bolster the vernacular versions of the app. Furthermore, the startup plans to expand into South East Asian markets and catalyze partnerships with sports teams and leagues all around the world.
