Anirudh Pandita and Ashwin Suresh, the co-founders of Loco, have helped catapult esports and game streaming from a niche hobby to a mainstream entertainment medium in just three years since launching the app in March 2020. Loco has experienced remarkable growth, with seven times daily active user (DAU) growth, three times vigorous streamer growth, and a 47 times increase in live watch hours.
Pandita, who previously worked in investment banking and private equity at Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Istithmar World Capital, said, “Today, Loco has 65% market share in the sector by DAU, and users are spending over 50 minutes a day watching live content.”
As part of the platform’s third-anniversary celebration, Loco introduced a new “Quest” feature, which adds a new layer of interactivity to the app. The “Made in India” platform is home to some of the most popular streamers. It has built highly engaged communities across games, including BGMI, FreeFire, and Call of Duty Mobile. It houses India’s top esports teams and has partnered with global game publishers like Activision, Ubisoft, and Riot Games and international brands like the NBA, Logitech, and Red Bull to host the country’s most prominent tournaments.
Loco has supported and streamed over 90% of the third-party esports tournaments in the country. In 2022, it witnessed some of the iconic pop culture moments of Indian gaming, including the most-watched esports tournament in Indian history (BGMS), during which the platform had almost 100 million views. In addition, multiple streams broke the 100k+ concurrency mark, a critical milestone for individual streamers and the gaming community. Loco supported India’s first fiction property based on esports and multiple non-fiction shows focusing on game streaming.
In June 2021, Loco raised its seed round of $9 million, led by Krafton and Lumikai Fund. In March 2022, it expanded its Series A round of $42 million from Hashed, Makers Fund, Catamaran Ventures, Krafton, Hiro Capital, and Korean Investment Partners. The platform’s top-notch infrastructure for live-streaming enables creators to go live, grow their online communities, and improve their monetization. The technology on the viewer side helps increase interactivity, enhances the sampling of new content, and enables users to find their gaming tribe.
According to Pandita, India will have over 700 million gamers in the next five years, and Loco will build the social experience platform for the virtual world. Presently, the app has over 55 million registered users.
