One97 Mobility Fund (OMF), an investment fund from the house of mobile VAS company One97 Communications Ltd, has invested S$1 million in Singapore-based mobile gaming company, TheMobileGamer.
“We will be using this investment to produce 10 more mobile game titles this year and to acquire more than 2.5 million users,” said Alvin Yap, CEO and founder of TheMobileGamer. The company had raised S$1 million from Innosight Ventures in March.
TheMobileGamer has developed mobile social games like Monster Fight, Club Wars and Captain Pirate, which run on mig33, Kotagames.com and Mozat. The company has more than 500,000 users and targets the South-East Asian market. It licenses and develops games which are localised and distributed through various networks and operators across South-East Asia. These games can be played on any mobile device that comes with a mobile browser.
“Mobile social gaming is a high growth area of mobile gaming. Also, Alvin and his team have shown their creativity and passion in launching addictive games on social platforms in South-East Asia,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, chairman and managing director of One97 Communications.
TheMobileGamer is the second investment by One97 in Singapore in less than a month. Three weeks ago, One97 Communications had invested an undisclosed amount in Singapore-based LeapSky Wireless, which provides easy-to-use 3G/WiFi-based mobile data services. Incubated at Singapore Management University Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, LeapSky’s initial product converts local 3G to WiFi, making it simple and cost-effective to use roaming mobile broadband services.
Earlier this year, One97 had also invested in Ciqual (a Scotland-based mobile broadband customer service solutions firm), along with Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and current Scottish investor Par Equity.
SAIF Partners and Intel Capital-backed One97 had also invested in companies like Oorja (a customer analytics firm), Paytm (a mobile commerce platform) and Oc2ps (a social networking application).