One of India’s leading business conglomerates, Dream11 is a fantasy sports platform that gives its users a fantasy sport arena online. Co-founded by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth in the year 2008, the company is now a member of the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.
Harsh Jain, the CEO of the company, is an engineer and MBA, who completed his education from University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Business School. Bhavit Sheth, the COO, is also an engineer with an MBA degree from Bentley University. In an interview, Jain said, “I pitched for two-and-a-half, three years and maybe 150 (investors) said no to me.” The company struggled to receive adequate funding from investors, because they (investors) were unsure of the idea behind the start-up.
SOURCE: Dream11
Dream11 faced a hurdle down the road in the later years, when people were apprehensive that the game encouraged the practice of gambling and betting in the name of fantasy sport. After several cases and PILs, Dream11 was relieved from its allegations. It was termed to be a legal fantasy sport arena where only the skills of the users were put into practice, irrespective of the fact that there was money involved.
Overcoming these challenges, the young start-up went on to become the pioneer of the fantasy sports genre in India, and also introduced a freemium platform in 2012 for fans of all kind of sports. Currently, the arena allows its users to engage in fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi and basketball.
After a long search by the co-founders for suitable investors, the company is funded by numerous conglomerates such as Kalaari Capital, Think Investments, Tencent Holdings, and Multiple Equity. By filling the void of fantasy sports (especially cricket) in India, Dream11, which had a mere 300,000 users in 2014, now has a mammoth 75 million user base that is growing. The user base grew over 25 times the original base number between 2016 and 2019.
Dream11 got its ultimate breakthrough in March 2019, when the BCCI (The Board of Control for Cricket in India) announced it as the Official Partner for the Indian Premier League, thus beginning Dream11’s four year partnership with the IPL.
SOURCE: Photo by Aksh Yadav on Unsplash
The Coronavirus pandemic saw numerous changes in the schedules of various sports leagues. IPL, which was originally scheduled to begin on March 29, was postponed to September 19, and will be held in UAE. Vivo, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer, had acquired IPL title rights for five years until 2022. However Sino- Indian tensions (Galwan Valley tensions) and the discouraging of the usage of Chinese products, led people to criticize the BCCI on this topic. Vivo, which originally had agreed to pay 2,190 crore rupees, (440 crore rupees per IPL season) mutually agreed with the BCCI to put a hold over title rights for this year. The bidding was open to business giants, and Dream11 won the bid for the title rights for IPL 2020, at 222 crore rupees, fighting hard against several leading start-ups such as BYJU’s and Unacademy, which closed their bids at 201 crores and 171 crores respectively.
Signing in Mahendra Singh Dhoni, former Indian cricketer as their Brand Ambassador, they launched the ‘Dimaag se Dhoni’ campaign in 2018 and have quite a lot of sportsmen as their ambassadors. They also partnered up with the Hero Indian Super league, the ICC, the Pro Kabaddi league and the International Hockey federation. Two young lads who saw a potential business plan that evolved from their passion for sports are now on the podium as the leading fantasy game arena in India. What a Dream Run for Dream11!
Written by Hetvi Mehta
Literary Sources:
https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/marketing/decoding-dream11/68576426