Gaming and esports content platform Rooter has raised $16 million in a growth round of funding led by existing investor Lightbox. The fundraise was 80% equity-based and 20% debt-based, founder and CEO Piyush Kumar told ETtech.

New investors were Trifecta Capital, Pivot Ventures, Baldota Family Office and Global Play Media among others. Existing investors include Duane Park Ventures, LeAD Sports & Health Tech Partners and ADvantage VC.

The Delhi-based startup aims to hit profitability by April 2024, and cross $10 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in the next three months, Kumar said. The startup is currently at a $7 million ARR scale. The company will also look for potential acquisitions and also seek overseas expansion in the Middle East, North Africa and Southeast Asia, Kumar added.

Founded in 2016, Rooter claims to have 17 million monthly active users (MAU), 1.6 million daily active users (DAU) and more than a million unique creators monthly.

“We need to continue growing the revenue. Second, we need to continue creating a very strong creator ecosystem, so we need to invest in technology to make more and more creators into gaming. Third, we will continue to invest in technology to better the experience of personalisation, make stronger recommendation engines and so on. Fourth is that in the next 12 to 18 months, we really want to scale our user revenue contribution on overall revenue,” Kumar said.

Rooter started as a sports fans engagement platform but pivoted in 2020 into game streaming after not having found a product-market-fit. Before the current round, it has raised $30 million in funding.

Rooter’s content library currently includes a mix of livestreams, short-form content and videos across over 10 Indian languages. About 90% of Rooter’s revenues come from brand advertisements from the likes of McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, H&M and Adidas. The rest is generated from direct users through an internal store on Rooter’s app that has its own currency for gifting purposes.“In India’s fast-growing gaming content space, Rooter has set strong benchmarks on how to strike the balance between growth and operational sustainability – establishing rapid scale while maintaining a healthy balance sheet and strong unit economics,” Sid Talwar, partner, Lightbox said.

Abhishek Gupta, Partner, Trifecta Capital, added, “We particularly like how Rooter has placed itself at the intersection of the needs of brands, streamers, and viewers in the highly dynamic gaming content and esports streaming category they operate in, and the success they have found in suitably monetising these avenues.”

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