Mobile Premier League raises fresh capital as valuation doubles to $800 million in four months

Online gaming startup Mobile Premier League (MPL) has raised around $100 million in a fresh financing round valuing the company at nearly $800 million, said two people in the know.

The new fundraise has been led by new investors including Composite Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures and Telstra Ventures, along with participation from a bunch of its existing backers, another person in the know said.

The valuation for MPL has almost doubled from its previous round when it stood at $450 million, as ET reported on Sept. 21, last year. The real money competitive mobile gaming platform had brought onboard a clutch of investors like SIG Global and RTP Global, MDI Ventures, Pegasus Tech Ventures at the time. MPL’s early investors include Sequoia India, Go-Ventures and Times Internet, a part of the Times Group, which publishes this paper.


Once the funding round is made official, MPL’s total investment raised will go up to $230 million.

Sai Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of MPL, did not offer any details of the fundraise but told ET, “Yes it's true, but the valuation is a hair's breadth shy of a billion dollars".

Real-money gaming has registered a big bump in the past year as people stayed home amid the pandemic-led lockdown. MPL competes with Dream11, WinZo, Mega, among others. Between March and September, MPL had grown over fourfold to hit over $1 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV), Srinivas told ET, last year in a chat.

In September, MPL had racked up $90 million, which the company said would be directed towards fuelling its expansion into markets including South Korea, Japan and the North American region, and strengthening product development with a focus on social functions such as live streaming, and audio and video content features.

MPL is a gaming platform that offers more than 70 real money games, including fantasy sports, rummy, poker, chess, 3D pool, ludo, and carrom. About 15-25% of its business comes from fantasy sports, depending on the offline seasonality of sports events.

Correction: This story has been updated to show that Moore Strategic Ventures is a new investor in Mobile Premier League and not Moore Capital, as erronuously stated in a previous version.