FanCraze raises $100 million in a funding round led by Insight Partners

Mumbai: FanCraze, the digital collectibles company that in January dropped NFTs (non-fungible tokens) of 75 moments from the ICC Men’s World Cup, has raised $100 million in a funding round.

The funding round was led by New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, with participation from B Capital.

The newly raised capital will be used to fund the expansion of the company’s metaverse across the cricket landscape for current and emerging partners.

Mirae Financial, Tiger Global, Coatue Management, Sequoia Capital India, Courtside Ventures, and Cristiano Ronaldo’s CR7 also invested in the round, which is touted as one of the largest Series A rounds in Asia.

FanCraze is building the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) official NFT ecosystem to deepen fans’ love of the sport.

“NFTs are fast becoming a movement and are enabling a direct relationship between all types of IP owners and their fans. NFTs represent culture and FanCraze is building an experience that would enable fans to collect cricket NFTs, engage with play-to-earn games and utilities, and own digital land,” said Anshum Bhambri, chief executive officer of FanCraze.

Discover the stories of your interest



“Cricket is one of the most popular sports in the world and FanCraze has quickly become the leader of cricket digital collectibles and NFTs, especially with their exclusive partnership with the ICC,” said Deven Parekh, MD, Insight Partners. “FanCraze’s co-founders, Anshum and Sundar, are best-in-class and we look forward to partnering with the FanCraze team as they continue to rapidly scale up and grow.”

The company plans to use the proceeds to integrate new sports relationships and to accelerate the growth of its global team, R&D lab, user experience team, gaming studio, and marketplace platform where fans can buy, trade, and craft their NFTs.

Funds will also be used to scale the company’s engineering, marketing, and customer success teams as the company expands its tech-centric offering to build the overall fan experience.

“We are thrilled to back FanCraze, which is augmenting the power of NFTs to give higher freedom, economic incentives, and thrill to fans. It can become a powerful mechanism to onboard new users in the Web3 space, where we have made multiple investments in the past,” said Kabir Narang, founding general partner at B Capital.

The company’s current partners include the ICC, Cricket West Indies (CWI), and cricketers including Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Muthiah Muralidaran, Jonty Rhodes, Shikhar Dhawan, Andre Russell, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Yuzvendra Chahal.

Stay on top of technology and startup news that matters. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest and must-read tech news, delivered straight to your inbox.

For all the latest Technology News Click Here 

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! TechAI is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.