Podeum has closed the pre-seed round of $1Mn from a host of investors, including Titan Capital, RTP Global, Point One Capital, Bharat Founders Fund, along with prominent angel investors like Sujeet Kumar (Co-founder, udaan), Ganesh Krishnan and Srini (Co-founder, Growthstory), Harsh (Fynd), among few others. The newly raised funding shall be utilized to further grow the sports creator ecosystem and invest in products to grow fan offerings.
Podeum was founded in 2022 by Ayush Prashant, Dhananjay Mishra, Mayank Sharma, and Parthsarthi. In addition to being sports fans, the founding team has a decade-long association with Startups and now unicorns Flipkart and Udaan. Sports in India alone, is a whopping $ 27 billion industry, with 100 million+ fans seeking deeper engagement, over and above one way broadcast during live matches, yet no online platform is exclusively catering to the needs of the sports fan community. While there are multiple activities that take place before and during a sports game - pre-match analysis, live-match commentary, online discussions on social media, fantasy and prediction contests - they take place across multiple online platforms. Podeum aims to integrate all the above experiences into a single app - which it envisions as a ‘second screen’ for every sports fan on match day.
Speaking about the funding raised, Ayush Prashant, Co-founder, and CEO of Podeum, said, “Podeum is more than doubling engagement volumes month on month, with creators fueling the growth in the number of fans. We are extremely happy to have associated with these eminent leaders in our journey ahead. Our vision is to build for sports creators and fans as what twitch has built for the gaming ecosystem.”
Commenting on the investment made, Bipin Shah, Partner, Titan Capital, said, "We are glad to partner with Podeum and its fantastic team who are working towards building the most promising app for sports lovers. We see a huge potential in their idea and are happy to back their vision of building a vertical social media for sports fans and experts."
Nishit Garg, Partner, RTP Global, opined, “Social engagement is a core element in sports fan engagement but fans, today, do not have engaging communities in which they can interact with one another during games. This all changes with Podeum. It gives people a platform to voice their opinions and lead communities - and we are excited by the results the company has already demonstrated."
Currently focusing on cricket, Podeum is building an online community space, where fans can play live fantasy and prediction games, chat with other fans and get live expert analysis from sports experts and celebrities. Sports creators being an important element in above engagement, Podeum is weighing on building an ecosystem for existing and aspiring sports influencers to grow, engage and monetize their follower base. With more than 200 sports creators having hosted on platform, including the likes of Wasim Jaffer, Veda Krishnamurthy, and Navneeth Krishna, Podeum aims to grow the creator base multifold in coming months
