Firescore Interactive Pvt. Ltd, a mobile game development studio, has raised $500,000 (Rs 3.73 crore at current exchange rates) in a funding round led by multinational studio and publisher CrazyLabs.
Firescore will use the funds mainly to set up a hyper-casual gaming hub for local and global game studios in India, it said in a statement. This hub – which will be known as CrazyHub – will be operated by the company and will offer tools and services to studios that partner with it.
Set up in 2018 by Karan Khairajani and Surojit Roy, Firescore develops games based on the casual and hyper-casual mobile segment. CrazyLabs is headquartered in Israel and conducts research, develops and distributes products in these segments. It has offices in countries including China, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Germany.
Mumbai-based Firescore said the decision to set up the hub was taken keeping in mind the struggle that Indian studios go through with respect to the paucity of funds and product development time.
“Working fast and testing ideas early in the development process is critical to pursuing a hyper-casual strategy, and we’re looking to support studios who can fit into this fast-paced environment,” Roy said.
CrazyLabs chief operating officer Guy Tomer said that Mumbai is the perfect location to launch the first CrazyHub.
The two firms have previously collaborated on projects including Soap Cutting, a hyper-casual title that has been downloaded over 50 million times on mobile application stores.
Deals in India’s gaming industry
The investment in Firescore Interactive is another signal of the growing strategic interest in Indian gaming segment.
Earlier this month, digital content, gaming and technology platform JetSynthesys Pvt Ltd raised around $40 million in funding led by the family offices of Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla and Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan.
In January, e-sports streaming platform Rheo raised $2 million in seed funding from a clutch of investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia’s Surge.
In November last year, casual social gaming startup SuperGaming raised $1.3 million in a seed funding round from Tokyo-based Dream Incubator and other investors.
Before that, in September, mobile games developer Nazara Technologies acquired a majority stake in Delhi-based SportsUnity Pvt. Ltd, a gaming platform that operates online multiplayer quiz service Qunami.