Gaming Startup BuyStars Raises $5 Mn Funding To Offer Sports Collectibles, Skill-Based Games

Fantasy gaming startup BuyStars has raised $5 Mn in a Pre-Series A funding round led by VC fund Lumikai, Chiratae and Leo Capital.

BuyStars will use the funding in scaling business and launching new games on the platform. 

Including the current fundraising, BuyStars secured $9 Mn in total from different investors.

Founded in 2021 by Aman Satija and Sriram Krishnamoorthy, BuyStars is a sports collectibles and skill gaming startup. It offers skill games including fantasy, player trading and trump cards. 

“Globally, the sports collectibles market is valued at $5.4 Bn annually with sports cards trading growing at nearly 140% year-on-year in terms of volume. In India alone, skill-based real money gaming and fantasy sports segment accounted for $1.5 Bn of the $2.6 Bn gaming industry in FY22, growing at a CAGR of 25% in the next five years,” said Salone Sehgal, founding general partner of Lumikai.

The founders–Aman and Sriram hold years of experience in the Indian real money gaming (RMG) segment. They held product and marketing leadership positions at multiple companies such as Jungle Games, cure.fit, Games24X7, IBM, Amazon, Flipkart and TCS, among others.

The startup claims to have onboarded 1.5 Mn users and clocked a monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) of over $1 Mn.

“BuyStars was started with a mission to disrupt how cricket fans engage with games today. We are extremely pleased that our efforts are getting recognised. While funding is never a testament to a company’s success, however, when experienced investors decide to back a company, it’s definitely a great validation of the mission one started with and a tribute to the hard work of a team which came together to build it,” said, Aman Satija, CEO and cofounder of BuyStars.

In India, it competes with the likes of gaming majors such as Dream11, Nazara Technologies, Halaplay and MPL.

As per an IBEF report, the country’s gaming industry was anticipated to be nearly $2.6 Bn in the financial year 2022. It is expected to grow to $8.6 Bn in FY27. 

In the meantime,  gaming majors–Dream 11 parent company Dream Sports, Mobile Premier League (MPL), Zupee and Games24x7 collectively wrote to the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) sharing their disagreement with IAMAI’s views on draft online gaming rules.

The above gaming startups shared that IAMAI did not consult them before rolling out the statement and calling the draft gaming regulations were ‘right on intent but poor on scoping’. They also informed that they were open to consultations with MeitY on the draft gaming rules.

It is here to be noted that the government appointed MeitY as the authoritative body to monitor the online gaming industry in December. 

Following this, in January, the ministry released the draft online gaming rules proposing a self-regulatory mechanism for companies in the sector.

The draft amendments in the draft online gaming rules proposed online gaming intermediaries to ensure due diligence in their proceedings. These include confirming users do not host, display, upload, publish, transmit or share an online game that does not conform to local laws, including any law on gambling or betting.