Bengaluru based E-Sports gaming platform SoStronk, founded by Prashant Prabhakar (CEO) and Karan Misra (CTO), has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from IP Ventures. “SoStronk empowers competitive gamers by bridging the gap between the game publisher and the user. It also provides tech infrastructure, support and production to E-Sports tournament organizers” says Ankur Mittal, Co-Founder IP Ventures. Akshat Rathee, Managing Director of NODWIN Gaming, is a strategic investor in SoStronk.
SoStronk is a tech enabler within the eSports industry with its first product being a dominant ‘playing’ platform in the Indian & South East Asian markets. SoStronk has both a B2C arm where it gives service offerings to competitive gamers for a subscription and a B2B arm where it has been the crucial entity behind running most of the major online and offline tournaments in the region.
Co-Founder and CEO Prashant has been a professional gamer, and also won Lifetime achievement award in E-Sports in India from ESL Global. Prashant said, “we’re really excited to partner with IPV and will utilise the funds for R&D and growing the team, with a focus on marketing, development and QA.”It also aims to diversify the bouquet of games and expand into new geographies like Australia and Indonesia.
IP Ventures angel investor Tanmaya Vats said “E-Sports is a very attractive segment with revenues already exceeding $1 Billion. SoStronk is a platform created for the Gamers by Gamers. More than half of 200 mn+ E-Sports enthusiasts are based in Asia and SoStronk has built a strong presence in the CSGO space here.”
E-Sports gaming is a sunshine industry with estimated revenues exceeding $3 Billion by 2022 and growing at a CAGR of 15-20% for the past 5 years. Within Asia, SoStronk is strategically positioned to take maximum advantage of this potential with server locations in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai. Tanmaya Vats, when asked about his experience investing with IP Ventures said, “IPV is uniquely positioned as a group of professionals & CXOs brought together due to a convergence of motivation. I have been particularly impressed with processes like Score-carding, meticulous due diligence and the involvement of members to add value & use their connects to help the start-ups.”
