Mumbai-based Pocket Aces Pictures Pvt. Ltd, which runs digital entertainment startup Pocket Aces, has acquired Loco, a live trivia game show app, for an undisclosed amount.
The acquisition will help Pocket Aces ramp up user growth and community engagement, the company said in a statement. As part of the transaction, Loco will get financing, marketing and content support from Pocket Aces.
“We believe that in a mobile-first consumption environment like India, a platform like Loco is the answer to television game shows,†Ashwin Suresh and Anirudh Pandita, co-founders of Pocket Aces, said in the statement.
“Reality TV shows... talent shows… and short-form fiction have found parellels. However, game shows as a genre have not seen any great mobile parallel. We think Loco is that product and we think that it can grow to millions of users very soon,†they said.
While Pocket Aces did not disclose the financial details of the transaction, a report in The Economic Times pegged the deal value at $1 million (Rs 6.4 crore).
The Loco app, which was earlier known as Showtime, offers an interactive trivia game show that lets users answer 10 multiple choice questions and win money in real time. The game’s prize money is Rs 10,000 and winners can get their reward directly into their Paytm account.
The live quiz covers topics such as current events, technology, food, sports, religion, politics, music, movies and history, according to information available on its Google Play store page. In 45 days of its launch, the company claims that the app has recorded 40,000 downloads.
The Loco app was started in November 2017 by Abhishek Madhavan. An engineer and an MBA by qualification, Madhavan had earlier worked as the head of product marketing at ed-tech startup Unacademy. In his earlier stints, he has worked at Neargroup chat bot and Freshworks as a product consultant and marketing professional.
Pocket Aces was founded in 2014 by Suresh and Pandita, who were investment banking and private equity professionals.
The company conceptualises, creates and distributes written and video content including web series through its social media and online channels – Dice Media, FilterCopy and Gobble.
The company has raised close to $3.5 million in external funding from the likes of Sequoia Capital, North Base Media, Aarin Capital, Axilor Ventures and NuVentures. In its last funding round, in December 2016, it raised $3 million (Rs 20 crore) in a Sequoia-led funding round.
