Bengaluru-based gaming startup Giga Fun Studios has raised $2.4 million in a seed round led by interactive media-focused fund Lumikai, with participation from Fireside Ventures.
According to a statement, the round also saw participation from All In Capital, Kettleborough VC and Riverwalk Holdings.
Founded by Krishnendu Mukherjee (former MPL and Zynga executive), Rahul Daga (former Zynga and m56 Studios) and Rahul Shekhar (former m56 Studios). The founders of Giga Fun have collectively shipped and operated over 10 games.
The fresh capital will be deployed with an aim to create a new benchmark in casual games for Indian and global audiences.
“We have been brainstorming the idea of creating a gaming studio that caters to the Indian audience and a problem we mutually identified was that while current dominant casual games (such as Candy Crush) are high in quality, they haven't been able to fully unlock an Indian player base due to a lack of cultural resonance. This is additionally visible in the lack of monetization participation of the Indian player. With over 5 billion downloads, India is one of the largest download markets for casual games,” said Krishnendu Mukherjee, co-founder, chief executive, at Giga Fun Studios.
Justin Shriram Keeling, founding general partner, Lumikai added that according to our recently released report, "India State of Gaming 2022," 80% of gamers show a high proclivity to play games based on Indian IP. Keeling states that culture-themed casual games have the potential to unlock massive disruption in the gaming space in India.
The investment in Giga Fun is in-line with Lumikai's strategy to bet on the domestic gaming scenario over the medium-long term.
In an interaction with VCCircle last month, Salone Sehgal, also a founding partner at Lumikai, had said that they see opportunities to create category leaders across the domestic gaming landscape spanning from content and platform, to tools and frontier tech like Web 3.0 in India.
Web 3.0 or Web3 is the latest iteration of the World Wide Web that incorporates aspects like token-based economics, blockchain tech and decentralization.
The Indian gaming industry is in the process to raise $513 million (around Rs 4,000 crore) by the end of this calendar year, Lumikai said in its new report, State of India Gaming FY22.
The sector has witnessed a funding jump of 380% from 2019 and 23% in 2020. The report surveyed 2,240 respondents, third-party data providers, industry leaders and Lumikai’s proprietary insights, further highlighting that Web3 has emerged as the most popular technology in games with 30% of 450 Indian Web3 firms operating in gaming. The space has secured $400 million in 2019–22.