Equity Monday: The TikTok mess, and a grip of neat European VC activity

Published September 21, 2020

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Friday’s episode.

What a busy morning. We had to cover TikTok . We had to talk VC rounds. So, this is what we got up to:

U.S. tech stocks are poised to sell off further this morning.
The Oracle-TikTok-Walmart-ByteDance deal is either coming into focus, or a period of even less clarity. It’s hard to tell.
Nikola founder Trevor Milton is leaving the board of his own company in the wake of fraud allegations. Shares of the company are sharply lower in pre-market trading.
Turning to TikTok, this primer represents the best over-the-weekend roundup that we could find. But, of course, things are still breaking as we come to print.
Since recording, Oracle has said that “upon creation of TikTok Global, Oracle/Walmart will make their investment and the TikTok Global shares will be distributed to their owners, Americans will be the majority and ByteDance will have no ownership in TikTok Global.” And, President Trump said this morning that China has to give up control of TikTok or the deal is off. ByteDance has said that it will retain control. You figure that out.
But there was some good stuff to chat about. Including the super-neat Mobile Premier League round worth $90 million, growth news from EU-based Babbel, a new London-based seed fund that got raised and a Swedish health tech Series B.
As you guessed from today’s title, it was fun to see such a concentration of EU VC activity.
Finally, will the Nikola mess discourage more SPACs from taking companies public? If the rest of the stock market wasn’t selling off, we would have said “no.” But today? Is the answer “maybe”?

Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Indian mobile gaming platform Mobile Premier League raises $90 million

Published September 21, 2020

Mobile Premier League (MPL) has raised $90 million in a new financing round as the two-year-old Bangalore-based esports and mobile gaming platform demonstrates fast-growth and looks to expand outside of India.

SIG, early-stage tech investor RTP Global and MDI Ventures led MPL’s $90 million Series C financing round, with participation from existing investors Sequoia India, Go-Ventures and Base Partners. Times Internet is also an early investor in MPL. The new investment brings MPL’s to-date raise to $130.5 million. It was valued between $375 million to $400 million pre-money, according to a person familiar with the matter.

MPL operates a pure-play gaming platform that hosts a range of tournaments. The app, which has amassed more than 60 million users, also serves as a publishing platform for other gaming firms. MPL, which does not develop games of its own, hosts about 70 games across multiple sports on the app today.

It’s a heist! And it has gone rogue! Can you beat the others to win the game? Rogue Heist, India’s very own multi-player shooter game, coming soon on MPL! Here’s a sneak peek 😉 pic.twitter.com/PkVAjN2b4O

— Mobile Premier League (@PlayMPL) April 20, 2020

The Bangalore-based startup also offers fantasy sports, a segment that has taken off in many parts of India in recent years.

Because fantasy sports is only one part of the business, the coronavirus outbreak that has shut most real-world matches has not impeded the startup’s growth in recent months. The startup claimed it has grown four times since March this year, and more than 2 billion cash transactions have been recorded on the app to date.

“We’re competing with battle-hardened, decade old companies with much, much deeper pockets but it’s incredible what the young team has achieved over the past couple of years. When we were on the Play Store, a couple of years back, MPL was the fastest app to reach a 1M DAU ever in India!” tweeted Abhishek Madhavan, SVP of Marketing at MPL. “We signed Virat Kohli (pictured above), when we were a 3-month old company! When we got out of the Play Store, we were told growth will be very very hard to come by, every single marketing metric would fall.”

Sai Srinivas, co-founder and chief executive of Mobile Premier League, told TechCrunch in an interview that the new financing round validates that esports is here to stay and it is beginning to see its e-commerce moment.

“I believe that esports will be inducted by the Olympics way before than cricket does. And the market cap of esports will most probably will exceed those of all physical sports combined in the next 10 years,” he said.

“Even in an environment as challenging as the current one, we are impressed with the success and accessibility of the platform concept – giving users a unique variety of experiences and social interaction. MPL’s track record speaks for itself, so we’re excited to support the team as they grow and expand,” said Galina Chifina, managing partner at RTP Global, in a statement.

But since an aspect of MPL is about fantasy sports, its app is not available on the Google Play Store. Google Play Store prohibits online casinos, and other kinds of betting, a guideline Google reiterated last week as it pulled Indian financial services platform Paytm from the app store for eight hours. Srinivas declined to comment on Google and Paytm’s episode.

The startup plans to expand outside of India in the following months, said Srinivas. He did not name the new markets, but suggested that India’s neighboring countries as well as Japan and South Korea will likely be part of it.

The startup also plans to expand its gaming catalog and offer more marketing support to third-party developers, who currently either sell licenses to MPL or work through a revenue-sharing agreement with the Indian startup.