BharatPe, a lending and digital payments company, revealed that it has signed a three-year agreement to join the International Cricket Council (ICC) as an official partner. According to the deal, BharatPe will publicize the association on television and digital media and carry out in-venue branding events at all ICC tournaments till 2023.
The forthcoming ICC World Test Championship (Southampton, UK 2021), Men’s T20 World Cup (India, 2021), Men’s T20 World Cup (Australia, 2022), Women’s World Cup (New Zealand, 2022), U19 Cricket World Cup (West Indies, 2022), Women’s T20 World Cup (South Africa, 2022), Men’s Cricket World Cup (India, 2023) and World Test Championship (2023) are among the important ICC tournaments.
The ICC collaboration is a logical outgrowth of BharatPe’s established cricket-centered marketing strategy. The firm presently boasts 11 Indian cricket players as brand ambassadors, including Rohit Sharma, Jasprit Bumrah, KL Rahul, Mohammed Shami, Ravindra Jadeja, Suresh Raina, Shreya Iyer, Prithvi Shaw, Sanju Samson, Yuzvendra Chahal, and Shubhman Gill.
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Apart from integrating BharatPe’s brand involvement across various ICC tournaments, this collaboration will also allow the digital payments company to carry out initiatives to connect cricket enthusiasts and shopkeepers throughout the nation.
Anurag Dahiya, chief commercial officer, ICC, said: “Our women’s and men’s events, provide brands a high-reach platform for conversations with involved fans. The 2021-23 period presents a unique opportunity with five senior-level World Cups taking place, which will set the stage for reaching out to an unprecedented number of cricket fans.”
Speaking on the association, Ashneer Grover, co-founder and CEO, BharatPe, said: “We believe that cricket is one of the biggest unifiers – that cuts across geographies and or languages. This association will enable us to build a stronger relationship with our existing merchants, as well as engage better with millions of new, small merchants across the length and breadth of India.”
BharatPe, which was co-founded in 2018 by Ashneer Grover and Shashvat Nakrani, claims to have over 60 lakh businesses spread over 100 cities. Since its inception, the firm has enabled the distribution of loans totaling over 1,600 crores to its companies, and its point of sale (PoS) business handles transactions totaling over 1,200 crores each month. The firm has attracted about $300 million in stock and debt from investors such as Coatue Management, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, Beenext, Amplo, and Sequoia Capital.
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