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Sports engagement platform Rooter has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from electronic goods and accessories manufacturer Intex Technologies.
Rooter was launched in May 2016 by Piyush Kumar, Akshat Goel, and Soham Sinha to bridge the gap in the sports fan engagement market through a tech product. The platform currently covers football, cricket, tennis and basketball.
It is a digital platform that connects, engages, and helps sports audiences interact with each other on a real-time basis during sports events.
The startup will use the freshly infused capital to strengthen its tech team.The startup is also planning to add more members to its sales and marketing team as well as the content division to bolster vernacular versions of the app.
As per a company statement, this round of funding will help accelerate the platform’s expansion into Southeast Asian markets and catalyse partnerships with sports teams and leagues around the world.
Rooter is aiming to carry out merchandising activities and possibly fan-player interactions. With the approaching sports season, the company hopes to exceed the current 50,000+ downloads (reported) and aims to cross half a million downloads by the end of the IPL 2017.
Commenting on the funding, Piyush Kumar, founder & CEO, Rooter said, “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 realise its potential. Intex’s deep understanding of the smartphone world and its popularity in Tier II and III cities of India will help us to promote and develop Rooter’s unique idea, further optimising it to perfectly fit the needs of smartphone users everywhere.”
Rooter’s R&D team will benefit from access to the technological setup of Intex to lower costs for the same. Intex’s ready database will allow Rooter to find new users.
Keshav Bansal, Director of Intex Technologies, while commenting on the collaboration said, “Rooter has a great fundamental idea. 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.”
Earlier in October 2016, Rooter raised an undisclosed amount of Angel funding from actor Boman Irani. Dhruv Chitgopekar, Partner, Kwan Entertainment, and Prantik Dasgupta also participated in this round. In September 2016, mobile-based social networking platform for sports, Khel Now received $350K (INR 2.3 Cr) from Anglian Omega Network. Other startups engaged in the sports segment include Sports365, Football Solutions, Unilazer Sports etc.
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