Sachin Tendulkar has become a strategic investor in Metasports Interactive, the Hyderabad-based company behind the cricket strategy game Hitwicket. The deal was announced on 3 November, and although neither side has disclosed how much Tendulkar has put in, the company has set a clear target, it wants Hitwicket to reach 100 million downloads within the next three years.
Tendulkar’s role goes beyond the money. He will also appear across Hitwicket’s in-game experiences, its content and its brand campaigns, which gives the game one of the most recognisable faces in world cricket at a time when it is trying to grow well beyond India.
Founded by Kashyap Reddy and Keerti Singh, Metasports Interactive launched Hitwicket in 2020, and the game now has more than 20 million players across 120 countries. Hitwicket is a competitive multiplayer game built around strategic decisions rather than reflexes, so players win by reading a match and choosing the right approach for each ball instead of by timing their shots. That focus appears to be keeping players hooked, since the company says they spend an average of 51 minutes a day in the game, and its revenue has doubled over the past six months.
Sachin says, “the game goes beyond reflexes to recreate how a cricketer thinks in the middle.”
The new investment also follows a large funding round earlier this year.
In April 2026, London-based Metica provided Metasports with $20 million in user acquisition funding, a non-dilutive model in which the company keeps its equity and repays the money based on performance measures such as user growth and revenue efficiency. At the time, Hitwicket had just over 18 million users in 109 countries, which means it has added roughly two million players and 11 countries in about six months. According to Metasports, Hitwicket’s monetisation, retention and the quality of its user acquisition data were what convinced Metica to deploy capital at that scale.
“Hitwicket stood out to me for how it brings the strategic thinking behind cricket into the game”
Tendulkar said the game’s emphasis on strategy was what drew him to it. “Hitwicket stood out to me for how it brings the strategic thinking behind cricket into the game,” he said, adding that cricket has always been about reading the bowler, assessing the field and choosing the right approach for every ball. In his view, the game goes “beyond reflexes to recreate how a cricketer thinks in the middle”, and he said that having enjoyed playing it himself, the association felt natural.
Reddy, who is co-founder and chief executive, said Tendulkar had recognised what sets Hitwicket apart in cricket gaming, and that working with him is helping the team understand how elite cricketers think on the field. He added that Tendulkar’s backing, together with the growth capital already behind the company, would help Metasports “take cricket strategy to every cricket fan in the world”.
Indian stars are backing game companies
The announcement came on the same day that actor Mahesh Babu invested in Shortgun Games, a Mumbai studio building PC and console titles, which makes it two major Indian celebrities putting money into game companies within a matter of hours. Cricket’s biggest names, meanwhile, have been moving closer to gaming for some time. MS Dhoni’s club, Mahi Clutchers, is part of the newly announced Google Play Arena mobile championship, and Tendulkar himself first lent his name to a game in 2019, when he launched India’s first VR cricket game.
This time, Tendulkar is also a shareholder in the company whose game he is promoting. For Metasports, the bet is that his following among cricket fans in India and across the wider cricketing world can carry Hitwicket from its 20 million players today to the 100 million downloads it is targeting by 2029. The game is available for download on both Android and iOS.
