B Capital has announced its participation in a $100 million Series A round fundraised by Mumbai-headquartered FanCraze, an NFT platform for digital cricket collectibles.
The round was led by US private equity and venture capital firm, Insight Partners, and is one of the largest-ever Series A rounds in Asia, the announcement said.
Korea’s Mirae Financial, US investment firm, Tiger Global, and Sequoia Capital India also participated in the round, as did international football star, Cristiano Ronaldo.
FanCraze is a developer of digital collectibles and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for cricket.
In January, the firm partnered exclusively with global governing body of the sport, the International Cricket Council (ICC), to build its official NFT ecosystem and help the organisation launch exclusive digital collectibles.
The start-up plans to use the funds from the fundraise to expand its cricket metaverse, the announcement said, including through the addition of new sports relationships and growth of its global teams and capabilities across engineering, marketing, and customer success.
Besides ICC, FanCraze has also partnered Cricket West Indies (CWI), the governing body for cricket in the West Indies, and has launched NFT collections for individual cricket stars, such as current captain of the Indian national team, Rohit Sharma.
“NFTs are fast becoming a movement and are enabling a direct relationship between all types of IP (intellectual property) owners and their fans,” said Anshum Bhambri, CEO of FanCraze, in the release.
FanCraze enables fans to collect cricket NFTs, engage with play-to-earn games and utilities, and own digital land. The start-up’s marketplace has already recorded “millions of dollars” in revenue since it went live in beta mode in February, Bhambri added.
He expressed his excitement in forming partnerships with leading international sport leagues, through which the firm plans “to engage fans through the next generation of sports-based assets, as we create the future of fandom together in the metaverse.”
“We are thrilled to back FanCraze, which is augmenting the power of NFTs to give higher freedom, economic incentives, and thrill to fans. It can become a powerful mechanism to onboard new users in the Web3 space, where we have made multiple investments in the past” said Kabir Narang, founding general partner at B Capital, in the announcement.
The support of global investors such as Insight Partners and B Capital indicates a growing acceptance of NFTs and the metaverse. Earlier this month, HSBC bought its first plot of digital land in The Sandbox metaverse, following a similar move by JP Morgan in February this year.
B Capital and Bhambri declined to comment beyond the release when approached by FinanceAsia.
