Fantasy stock gaming app TradingLeagues has raised $3.5 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by Leo Capital and joined by investors including Jeejeebhoy Family Office and the family office of KP Balaraj.
The funds are further planned to improve the user experience (UX) on the app to further increase the user base of over 7 lakh into millions. TradingLeagues was launched last year in November by Rain Technologies which is operated by Co-founder of Upstox, Raghu Kumar and Co-founder of AGacquisitions, Harsh Agarwal.
TradingLeagues provides various types of free and paid fantasy trading leagues allowing users to improve their stock market skills. The company mainly focuses on Indian and US stocks but despite being registered in the US, majority of the operations are based out of their office in Bengaluru, India, according to Your Story.
As reported by Entrackr, according to Raghu Kumar, the app was built to introduce people in India to stock markets and its earning potential through gamification and removing the unnecessary obstacle of opening a brokerage account.
“We built TradingLeagues as a fantasy gaming app, first and foremost, since it was important to retain traditional gaming elements while introducing users to the financial markets,” co-founder Harsh Agarwal said.
NSE restricts usage of stock market data for fantasy trading
While these fantasy stock trading apps have been rising in popularity recently, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) has notified all its trading members that using stock exchange data for gaming and virtual trading purposes is not allowed.
Kumar has clarified that TradingLeagues does not use any data from NSE and rely on data from other sources like Contract for Difference (CFD) feeds, market reference feeds, and other aggregated data feeds.
Furthermore, the company has also planned to start operating in the US over the next 12–18 months further adding that their aim is to modify the features according to user suggestions.
“Once our Series A round goes through, we will work on getting the necessary licences and launch the app in the US and other markets. This will make TradingLeagues a cross border app, where global users can play against each other in an RMG environment,” Kumar concluded.