MUMBAI: Indian sports technology company Dream Sports, parent company of Dream11, FanCode and DreamX, has appointed Devneet (Dev) Bajaj as chief corporate development officer.
In his new role, Bajaj, who was last with early stage venture capital firm Kalaari Capital as venture partner, will lead investments and drive global strategic partnerships in fantasy sports, sportstech, gaming and other opportunistic sectors. He will also work closely with leaders of the Dream Sports companies on future fundraising and strategic business planning.
Dev has over 17 years of experience across entrepreneurship, venture capital, private equity and investment banking. At Kalaari Capital Dev’s key mandate was evaluating and managing early-stage investments in a variety of sectors including fintech, gaming, sportstech, SAAS, and agtech.
Talking about the appointment of Bajaj, Harsh Jain, co-founder and CEO of Dream Sports, said: “We are excited to have Dev on board to lead our business expansion through investments and partnerships. Dev’s extensive and versatile experience as an investor and entrepreneur over the last decade will help us further build the sports ecosystem in India. With a strong passion for sports, I am sure that Dev will be invaluable in identifying strategic partners and scaling potential sports businesses. While Dream11 continues to grow rapidly, Dream Sports is hiring 250+ talented Sportans this year and actively expanding its portfolio of sports businesses. In the last year, we launched FanCode, a multi-sport aggregator platform with 15 million users already, and DreamX, a sports accelerator powering several new start-ups.”
Bajaj opined: “Dream11’s 80 million user base is a testament to the Indian sports fans’ desire for deeper and meaningful engagement with their favourite sports. This desire will drive explosive growth in the Indian sportstech sector over the next decade. With $5.5 billion invested in sportst
ech in Asia, India leads the way with 40% of all SportsTech start-ups in Asia, but has received less than 10% of the funding! Dream Sports can address this gap by helping entrepreneurs with capital and digital-product-first DNA. Therefore, we believe there are multiple early and growth-stage investment opportunities for us within Fantasy Sports, Gaming and the broader SportsTech ecosystem. I have a lot of respect for Harsh, Bhavit and our management team. We share a common passion with many entrepreneurs in India who want to help Indian Sports with disruptive technology. In my new role, I aim to ensure that start-ups and mid-stage companies find Dream Sports a valuable investor and partner.”
