Bangalore-based MoonFrog labs, a startup which develops games specially designed for Indian audience, has nabbed $15 Million in a Series A round, led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital.
This fresh round will be used in expanding team, to develop games in new genres, including action, strategy, and roleplaying. This fresh capital will also see utilisation in upgrading company’s current back-end and analytics system, along with investments into its various
While e-commerce and IoT startups continue to raise massive funding in India, game development industry has still been on a very nascent stage, and hasn’t really matured. However, an investment such as this, will go a long way in washing off India’s conservative approach towards game development, where many still do not count it among “actual jobs”.
Tanay Tayal, Co-Founder of Moonfrog Labs tells The Tech Portal,
There is a huge gap in local content available to Indian gamers. Our aim is to bridge this gap and provide exciting, engaging experiences for India’s growing mobile player base. This round of funding is a vote of confidence in our ability, it will help us grow our talented team and redefine mobile entertainment in India.
MoonFrog labs is currently focussed towards developing games,specially designed for Indian audience. The company currently runs popular avatars of traditional Indian card games like Teen Patti (sort of your regular Poker), and has gained significant amount of traction for the same. It also runs another popular title based on the popular game “Bingo”, by the name of Bingo Club.
The startup says that its games have been fully optimized for India’s “flaky” 2G and 3G coverage, thus providing Indian users with optimum gaming experience without the worries of emptying up expensive data-packs.
MoonFrog’s flagship title, Teen Patti HD, has been downloaded over 2 million times on both iOS App Store and Android play store, and the company claims it to be among the top 5 highest grossers in India. The game has an impressive rating of 4.4 from over 33K reviews on Google’s PlayStore.
MoonFrog Labs was founded in 2013 by ex-Zynga developers, who worked on popular titles like Bubble Safari, Castleville, Empires & Allies, and the insanely famous Mafia Wars.
Moonfrog’s monetization strategy depend upon in-game purchases rather than the usual in-app advertisements approach. The startup believes that users are more engaged if their gameplay remains uninterrupted by those irritating in-app ads.
MoonFrog Labs had earlier raised a $1 Million seed round, which sums up to a total of $16 Million in capital till date.
