Delhi-based online poker platform 9Stacks has successfully closed its Series A round of funding on Monday, raising some INR28 crore (US$3.84 million) from a pool of investors led by early-stage venture capital firm WaterBridge Ventures.

Monday’s round of equity financing comes less than a year after SparSkills Technologies, which owns and operates 9Stacks, raised INR10 crore (US$1.4 million) from a group of angel investors in December 2017. This time, 9Stacks plans to use the proceeds to expand its team and advance its technology, with a particular focus on user acquisition, data analytics, machine learning, and product and market expansion.

“We want 9Stacks to be the preferred platform for poker in India, especially for new players, where anyone can discover, learn and play poker, anytime, anywhere,” 9Stacks CEO Sudhir Kamath said in a statement. 9Stacks currently offers its online poker service to 24 states in India.

9Stacks is the first Indian online poker company to reach such milestone for an institutional Series A funding round. This, according to Kamath, “is a great sign of confidence” not just in the 9Stacks team, but also in the systems and processes they’ve put in place, as well as the growing online poker market in India.