An Indian Sports Fan Engagement Platform named Rooter has bagged $1.7 million in a recent fresh funding round hosted by several leading organizations such Paytm, Adidas family-backed leAD Sports, Rockstud Capital, and Founder Bank Capital-the early-stage arm of RB Investments.

Anthill Ventures, Venture Catalysts and other angel investors also participated in the round, according to a press statement. The startup will be using the fresh capital to grow its user base over the next one year and capitalise on its upcoming e-sports and gaming content and communities. Rooter also plans to launch user monetisation channels, in addition to advertising.

As part of the deal, Rooter is also entering into a strategic partnership with Paytm First Games where both companies will collaborate to grow cricket, fantasy sports, e-sports and gaming ecosystem.

Founded by Piyush and Dipesh Agarwal in 2016, Rooter, which currently has 8 million users, was largely built for live sports gaming during its early days before it pivoted to content in 2019.

“We started Rooter with the objective of creating a sports fan community and we are glad our pivot to content has found a strong product-market fit,” Piyush, founder and CEO of Rooter, said. “We are excited to onboard Paytm, who aside from their investment, will also integrate Rooter into Paytm and Paytm First Games while we will work with them to be the biggest source of user content in sports and gaming.”

Sudhanshu Gupta, COO of Paytm First Games, said: "We continue to grow our content offerings through gaming and the addition of Rooter's communities and user-generated content will further enhance the use cases available on our platform.

In the coming months, we will add more interactive content around Fantasy sports, Esports, and games while bringing benefits of the Paytm ecosystem to Rooter.”