Social gaming startup Cricnwin gets seed funding from Chinese investor, others

Gurugram-based social gaming platform Cricnwin has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round led by Chinese accelerator and venture fund ZDream Ventures.

The company's co-founders said that a group of angel investors had also participated in the round.

These high net worth individuals include Ankush Nijhawan, co-founder of business-to-business (B2B) travel portal Travel Boutique Online; Rahul Khetrapal, who runs several casinos in Goa under the brand Casino Pride; Gaurav Bhatnagar and Manish Dhingra.

Cricnwin co-founder Venus Dhuria said the company plans to use the fresh capital for product development and market expansion.

"We are also in talks for further investment as we eye expansion beyond India," said Dhuria.

Operated by Cheruniq Technology Pvt. Ltd, Cricnwin was founded in 2015 by Dhuria and Vipul Agrawal. The duo had previously worked together at Rutogo, an intercity cab aggregator which was acquired by ixigo in 2015.

Cricnwin offers an engagement platform for cricket fans. The mobile-based app has pre-match quizzes and chat forums, live match prediction games, and post-match interactions. Participants win reward coins for every engagement, which are redeemable at platforms like Paytm and Amazon.

The platform claims to have more than 250,000 users with around 15,000 daily active users.

"We are planning to go live on various platforms such as iOS and mobile web," said co-founder Agrawal.

"We are also planning to launch the platform in Hindi soon along with expansion in 10 major cricket playing countries."

A few sports-focused tech startups have raised money over the past couple of years.

In August last year, New Delhi-based India Sports Flashes Pvt. Ltd, which operates sports content app Sports Flashes, raised an undisclosed amount from media conglomerate Bennett, Coleman and Company Ltd (BCCL).

Six months before that, Khel Now, a mobile-based social platform for sports, raised $500,000 (Rs 3.4 crore) from Bangkok-based investment firm Indochine International.

Another player in the space is Rooter, a social engagement platform for sports fans, which received investment from consumer electronic firm Intex last year. Bollywood actor Boman Irani had invested in the startup in 2016.

Investors
ZDream had previously backed subscription based online grocery startup Milkbasket and digital media platform iamwire. Last January, ZDream acquired Xeler8, Inc., an intelligence platform providing a database on startups to venture capital and private equity firms.

Ankush Nijhawan and Rahul Khetrapal had earlier backed Delhi-based Kaama Breweries Pvt. Ltd, which sells craft beer under the brand Witlinger.

In 2016, the trio of Nijhawan, Bhatnagar and Dhingra had invested in branded workspace aggregator Qdesq.