Indian Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar has become a strategic investor in Metasports Interactive, the Hyderabad-based gaming company behind the mobile cricket strategy game Hitwicket.
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Metasports did not disclose the size of the investment.
With Tendulkar on board, the startup aims to take Hitwicket to 100 million downloads within the next three years, while it claims to ave 20 million players today.
Beyond the investment, Tendulkar will feature across Hitwicket’s in-game experiences, content and brand activations, the company said.
Metasports was founded by Kashyap Reddy, its CEO, and Keerti Singh. Hitwicket, launched in 2020, now has players in more than 120 countries, according to the startup. It said the game’s revenue doubled over the last six months and that players spend an average of 51 minutes a day in it.
What drew Tendulkar to the game
Hitwicket is a competitive multiplayer game built around strategic decision-making. Each user plays the role of the owner, coach and captain of a cricket team and competes against other players.
Tendulkar said that strategic side is what attracted him.
“Hitwicket stood out to me for how it brings the strategic thinking behind cricket into the game. Cricket has always involved reading the bowler, assessing the field and deciding the right approach for every ball. Hitwicket captures that decision-making, going beyond reflexes to recreate how a cricketer thinks in the middle,” Tendulkar said.
“I enjoyed playing the game, believe in what the team is building, and that makes the association feel natural,” he added.
Reddy said working with Tendulkar was helping the team understand how elite cricketers think on the field, which it is using to improve engagement in the game.
“Tendulkar’s belief in what we’ve built, together with the growth capital behind us, lets us take cricket strategy to every cricket fan in the world,” Reddy said.
Tendulkar has been an active angel investor for more than a decade. According to data from Tracxn, his portfolio includes 15 companies, starting with Musafir in 2013.
His investments include Spinny, Kissht, Azad Engineering, JetSynthesys and Unacademy.
Funding so far
The investment comes about six months after Metasports secured $20 million in user acquisition (UA) funding from London-based Metica in April. Metica is a growth financing and technology company that offers financing for game and app developers.
UA funding is non-dilutive. The capital goes towards marketing and acquiring new players, and is provided based on performance metrics, so the startup does not give up equity. As part of that deal, Metica also deployed its own platform to optimise Hitwicket’s in-game revenue.
“User acquisition funding is reserved for companies that demonstrate strong unit economics and repeatable growth,” Metica CEO Phil Mohr said at the time. At that point, Metasports said it was targeting about 8x growth over the following 18 months.
Before the Metica deal, Metasports had raised $8 million from Prime Venture Partners and Singapore-based Horizon Ventures. Prime first backed the startup in November 2022, when it invested $3 million in what has been described as a seed round, alongside the launch of Hitwicket Superstars.
Famous Cricket commentator Harsha Bhogle came in as a strategic investor in April 2024, a similar arrangement in which he also contributes cricket content to the game.
From 3 million to 20 million players
Metasports’ own figures show how fast the game has grown. When Prime invested in November 2022, Hitwicket had a little over 3 million users in 100 countries, with more than 30% of them outside India.
By April 2024, when Bhogle invested, it had crossed 5 million downloads and was played in 109 countries, with India, the UK, the US and Australia as its top four markets. It set a target of 50 million downloads in two years at the time.
The player base stood at 18 million in April 2026 and has since passed 20 million.
Metasports said more than 97% of Hitwicket’s revenue comes from in-app purchases across India and international markets, and claims it is the only game made in India to do so. It also claims players spend about 15 minutes a day more on Hitwicket than on Candy Crush.
Where Indian gaming stands
Metasports operates in the part of Indian gaming that was left standing after Parliament passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act in August 2025. The law bans all online real- money games, whether of skill or chance, but recognises and promotes e-sports and online social games, with online social games allowed to charge one-time or subscription fees as long as there is no wagering, according to an analysis by law firm Trilegal.
India’s free-to-play gaming market grew 17% year-on-year to $1.5 billion in calendar year 2025, according to Lumikai’s State of India Interactive Media Report 2025, released in March 2026. The report counted 555 million gamers, down from 609 million a year earlier, with 25% of them paying.
The top-grossing games in the report were led by Garena Free Fire, BGMI, Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans. Lumikai projects the market will reach $3.2 billion by 2030.
