CR7 bats for Indian 🏏 NFT startup’s $100m round

India-based FanCraze (formerly known as Faze Technologies), a startup focusing on digital collectibles or NFTs, has raised US$100 million in a series A round led by US-based VC firm Insight Partners, with participation from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital. CR7, the firm of football professional Cristiano Ronaldo, also invested in the round.

Image credit: FanCraze

FanCraze is on a mission to build the metaverse for cricket. It allows users to create NFT collections, trade the tokens with other fans, and win an opportunity to interact with their favorite cricketers. The NFTs can also be used across upcoming apps and play-to-earn games to earn financial rewards.

The company plans to use the fresh funds to continue expansion of its metaverse across the cricket landscape for current and emerging partners. It also aims to integrate new sports relationships and to grow its global team and capabilities across its research and development lab, user experience team, gaming studio, and marketplace platform. The funds will also be used to scale the company’s engineering, marketing, and customer success teams.

The startup is building the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) official NFT ecosystem to deepen fans’ love of the sport. Besides the ICC, the company’s current partners include Cricket West Indies and a number of cricket professionals including Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, Muttiah Muralidaran, Jonty Rhodes, Shikhar Dhawan, Andre Russell, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Yuzvendra Chahal.

“FanCraze’s marketplace went live in early February and has already recorded millions of dollars in revenue while it is still in early beta. We’re thrilled to continue partnering with the leading sports leagues around the world to engage fans through the next generation of sports-based assets as we create the future of fandom together in the metaverse,” said Anshum Bhambri, co-founder and CEO of FanCraze, in a statement.

The company was founded in 2021 by Bhambri, a fellow of Andreessen Horowitz’s Crypto Startup School, and Sundar Raman, an executive at Reliance and a former COO of the Indian Premier League.

See also: Inside an ‘NFT factory’ that’s shaking up GameFi

Cricket has one of the largest fan followings in South Asia. Fantasy sports, which includes sports betting, is already a US$150 billion market in India. It is expected to grow much larger with the advent of NFT games.

Other investors in the funding round include:

• Mirae Financial
• Tiger Global
• Coatue Management
• Sequoia Capital India
• Courtside Ventures