Saumya Singh Rathore (Co-founder WinZo)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Saumya Singh Rathore

• Saumya Singh Rathore was born and grew up in Uttar Pradesh.

• Till higher secondary, she lived in Uttar Pradesh.

• After completing her master’s degree, she started her professional career with KPMG, London, in September 2009.

• In 2010, she moved back to India and joined Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. (The Times of India) across print, radio, and television verticals as a business manager. She led budgeting and planning for various Times Group companies.

• During her time at Times Group, she played a key role in the launch of the ET Now channel.

• From March 2012 to September 2013, she worked as the Head of Compensation & Benefits at Bennett Coleman & Co. Ltd. (Times Group) in Mumbai. During this time, she led the C&B team as part of a major corporate effort to merge and restructure different Times Group companies for better resource use.

• From February 2013 to January 2015, Saumya Singh Rathore worked as a partner for the English Entertainment Cluster at Times Network in Mumbai, where she handled product launches and also led organisational re-engineering and process redesign to improve profitability.

• At Time Network, she has also worked on the launch projects for channels including Movies Now, Romedy Now, and Movies Now+.

• Rathore was the founding team member of ZO Rooms and Zostel, a Tiger Global-backed hospitality startup, launched in January 2015.

• In 2017, Saumya Singh Rathore, along with her ex-colleague Paavan Nanda from ZO Rooms, co-founded a leading social gaming app, WinZo. Under her leadership, WinZo raised $100 million in funding.

• In just three years, WinZO has become India’s largest vernacular social gaming platform, having over 100 million registered users. WinZO offers more than 100 games across six formats and supports 12 languages, including English, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, and Bhojpuri. The brand collaborates with top social influencers, including Bhuvan Bam and Carry Minati, as well as cricket legend Mahendra Singh Dhoni, and sponsors the IPL franchise Kolkata Knight Riders.

• In 2023, Saumya Singh Rathore was listed in India’s top 200 Self-made Entrepreneurs of the millennium list.

• On 26 November 2025, the Enforcement Directorate arrested Saumya Singh Rathore and Paavan Nanda under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). They were sent to one-day ED custody by the court.

  

• After the arrest, ED has frozen assets worth hundreds of crores connected to WinZO and its founders.

• In the statement, ED claimed that,

“Even after the ban of RMGs by the Union government (w.e.f. 22/08/2025), an amount of ₹43 crore is still held by the company without refunding to the gamers/customers. Bonds, fixed deposits, and mutual funds worth ₹505 crore “possessed” by WinZO Games were frozen under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

• Along with entrepreneurship, Saumya Singh Rathore is a trained psychologist with the British Psychological Society.