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Bangalore-based mobile gaming startup, Mech Mocha, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from seed-stage venture capital firm Blume Ventures and ecommerce marketplace Flipkart.
The funds will be utilised to scale its team, and develop a back-end platform that includes social and payment solutions for their games.
Arpit Agarwal, principal, Blume Ventures, said that the company is investing actively in building India’s first ethnographic intelligence framework to be able to quickly localize their games for different regions of India. “Mech Mocha founders have actionable insights on this market due to continuous focus tests and market research,” Agarwal added.
Founded by IIIT Gwalior graduates Arpita Kapoor and Mohit Rangaraju, Mech Mocha is a mobile gaming startup that aims to disrupt mobile entertainment for Indian Masses.
The company said it wants to work towards developing culturalized content, efficient 1-click 1-rupee payments and alternatives to distribution. It recently developed a game for the movie Chhota Bheem – Himalayan Adventure, based on a popular Indian cartoon character.
Arpita Kapoor, co-founder, Mech Mocha said, “Smartphone penetration in India assures that mobile gaming will be huge, with major growth drivers being the Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. Our current title has references of popular culture, local text gratifications in Hinglish and many other India-inspired assets which make it highly relatable and engaging for the audience.”
The founders are also the International Game Developers Association Scholars and feel that there are not many studios from India making quality content and hence are unable to compete globally with other games.
The company was a part of iAccelerator batch and has raised an angel funding from Devendra Parulekar, a partner at Ernst & Young; Sanjay Mehta, a member of both Indian Angel Network and Mumbai Angels; Ravi Trivedi, founder of Srijan Capital; and another unnamed individuals.
The global gaming industry is pegged at $70.4 Bn. Other gaming startups that have been funded include Moonfrog Labs, which raised $15 Mn from US-based venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global and Octro Inc. which was also backed by Sequoia Capital.
Prior to this, Blume Ventures and Flipkart have also invested in MadRat Games Pvt. Ltd, a Bangalore-based toys and games maker, which raised about $168k (INR 1.8 Cr.) from Snapdeal’s founders in 2015 and $1 Mn from Flipkart last November.
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