Beryllium founder Amay Makhija
Beryllium, a Singapore-based startup that aims to engage and educate the younger generation on how trading works through fantasy sports, today announced that it has secured US$3 million in pre-Series A round of investment, led by US-based Bullpen Capital.
Other investors include local VC firm Genting Ventures and existing investor UK-based Velo Partners.
The latest deal follows a US$600,000 seed round in November 2019.
Beryllium will use the fresh funding to expand its team and engineering resources. It will also explore and facilitate more product avenues, game formats, and features.
The startup also aims to expand its product globally, while further developing Singapore tech headquarters.
Founded in 2019 by Amay Makhija, Beryllium is an online platform that introduces trading systems to fantasy sports, so that users can buy and sell fantasy stocks in athletes.
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With the vision to ensure trading engages the younger generation and the firm belief that trading should be expanded beyond traditional markets, Beryllium aims to ensure that users across all sectors and industries are able to trade in a digitally native, experience-driven manner.
Makhija said: “As a passionate believer in bringing trading mechanisms to game design, our trading engine for fantasy sports has really set us apart from regular fantasy leagues.”
“We aim to engage and empower the younger generation with knowledge on how trading works and hope to add value to this space by creating a platform that guarantees a seamless user experience,” he added.
Fantasy sports is one of the fastest growing markets around the world. According to Allied Market Research, the fantasy sports market was valued at US$18.9 billion in 2019, and is expected to reach a valuation of US$46.7 billion in 2027, globally.
In India alone, the number of fantasy sports users has seen exponential growth, from two million users in 2016 to more than 100 million in 2020.
“Beryllium sits at the intersection of day trading, social gaming and sports-tech,” said Paul Martino, General Partner at Bullpen Capital. “We see massive opportunity in a fantasy-sports-meets-traditional-day-trading-type play, and we learned early on with FanDuel how big of an impact fantasy sports technology can have in the right hands.”
Beryllium has recently launched its first brand, Sixer, revolving around the concept of fantasy cricket in India. It is fantasy game where you can buy and sell fantasy stocks in cricket players. The better the player plays on the pitch, the price goes up and vice versa. Your role is to predict the future performance of the players and build a portfolio accordingly.
You can buy fantasy stocks at the quoted buy price, track how the price changes as games go on, and sell your fantasy stocks at the quoted sell price.
Founded since 1965, Genting Ventures is the corporate venture arm of Genting Group, a Malaysia-based conglomerate with diversified businesses across leisure & hospitality, gaming, entertainment, plantations, property development, biotech, and energy. Genting has operations spanning across Singapore, Indonesia, India, China, the US, as well as the UK.
Bullpen Capital is challenging the traditional model of venture capital as the pioneer in “post-seed funding”. Its model relies heavily on leveraging data and seeks out the startups who are “off by one”; those that have achieved product-market fit in nontraditional locations and markets ranging from gaming to the Internet of Things and the sharing economy.
Since 2010, Bullpen has invested in hundreds of companies across five funds that have generated billions in revenue. The portfolio features name-brand companies like FanDuel, WAG, SpotHero and Grove Collaborative.
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Image Credit: Beryllium
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