India’s largest eSports and mobile gaming platform MPL is in talks with leading crypto giant FTX to attract investment. MPL is approaching several investors, including FTX as an initiative to push into Web3 gaming.
MPL plans to raise the investment as an extension to its Series E round, at a valuation of $2.5 billion. As a part of the Web3 push, MPL has already involved Sequoia Capital India and RTP Global as its investors.
The Indian gaming firm has several mobile video games ranging from sports, fantasy games, and card games, among many other genres. Moreover, MPL has over 5 million monthly active “cash playing” users, as per its December investor presentation. The monthly average revenue per user stands at about $5.
MPL is preparing to build the advanced version of the game distributed platform where over 500 million tournaments are already being played every month.
Amid the crypto boom, Indian Cricketers including Smriti Mandhana and Zaheer Khan entered digital collectibles by joining Rario last year. Now, MPL’s prominent competitor Dream111 is also looking to lead a $100 million investment in NFT startup Rario.
Though FTX has so far largely been involved with MPL via partnerships and sponsorships, its anticipated investment would officially mark the arrival of FTX into the India startup ecosystem.
Apart from this, FTX has been actively working to bring gaming and cryptocurrency together. Last month, FTX made its first move into in-house Web3 game development, acquiring Good Luck Games.