ShareChat Launches Fantasy Sports App In India With Twitter Funding

Twitter-backed ShareChat is looking to capitalize on the increasing interest of the Indian market in fantasy sports with a new app called Jeet11.

The fantasy sports app that the Bangalore, India-based company has been working on behind the scenes for six months will allow users to bet on India's most popular sport, cricket, as well as football, sources told TechCrunch.

ShareChat is a social networking and content sharing platform that was founded in 2015. Last year, it was able to raise $100 million in a Series D funding round led by Twitter, which boosted their total funded amount to $222 million, according to Crunchbase. Other investors included Lightspeed Ventures Partners, SAIF Partners, Morningside Venture Capital, India Quotient, Shunwei Capital, and Trustbridge Partners.

Jeet11 already has 120,000 registered users, but despite this, the company will be jumping in a kind of business that plenty of markets brush off simply because of its inherent gambling nature where users bet on players based on their performance. Even Twitter isn't permitting ads related to Jeet11's business.

The app isn't downloadable on the Google Playstore because of the same restriction on betting apps, and the only way that ShareChat is getting through to users is with three platforms: Xiaomi's GetApps app store, web app, and the Jeet11 website.

In addition, there are also restrictions within the app itself to comply with regulations in India that ban sports betting. Users would first have to verify that they don't live in Indian states, including Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, Sikkim, and Telangana.

Still, cricket is just hugely popular in India in that capturing a market with increasing interest in fantasy sports will be a boon for ShareChat's bottom line. However, a considerable opposition in Dream11 is right in front of Jeet11. Dream11 is backed by Tencent and claimed that it already had 65 million users last year who can play fantasy cricket, hockey, football, kabaddi, and basketball on its platform.

"This is presently at an experimentation stage. Based on the outcome of the experiment, we will decide on the future of the product," a ShareChat spokesperson told Inc42.

ShareChat does have 60 million-plus users as well, which means that it has plenty to leverage should it decide to pursue Jeet11.