PlaySimple Games, a Bangalore-based mobile social gaming startup, has received ₹27 crore funding in its Series A round from SAIF Partners, along with its existing investor IDG Ventures.
With the funding raised in this round, the company will now used the proceedings to further expand its team, and for developing fresh content. Earlier, the company had raised its $500,000 in its seed funding round, which was led by IDG Ventures.
Mayank Khanduja, principal at SAIF Partners, said:
Gaming is a huge market internationally and a very competitive one. We have known the PlaySimple team for over a year and have been amazed by the growth they have got in a very short period of time.
Karthik Prabhakar, director and head – Fundraising at IDG Ventures India, said,
Although gaming is considered be a hit-and- miss business, PlaySimple’s formula on building games and their highly data driven/analytical approach have allowed them to be successful.
The company was founded by ex-Zynga employees — Siddharth Jain, Preeti Reddy and Suraj Nalin, along with IIT Bombay alum Siddhanth Jain. PlaySimple largely caters to markets outside of India, namely US, Australia and Canada.
The games developed and released by PlaySimple are available on the Android and iOS platforms, as well as on social media platforms, such as Facebook, are free to download. However, players can purchase virtual goods as they progress. An additional revenue stream is from the advertisements placed in the games.
PlaySimple Games has two flagship products — GuessUp and WordTrek. The company claims that it has witnessed more than 10 million downloads for both applications. Siddharth Jain, co-founder of the company, told ET:
Most of the capital will be used for building our team. We currently have about 22 people, and hope to ramp up that number to about 50 by end-2017. We have openings across the board, and are looking to hire product managers and designers.
He added that the company is targeting a top-line of $5 million-$7 million for the financial year ending March 2017, and expects to be profitable by the end of the current fiscal. For FY 2016, it earned revenue of about $3 million.
As per some industry estimates, India’s mobile gaming market is still at a nascent stage, and estimated to be at $40-$50 million, but is growing at a CAGR of 50%. On the other hand, the gamification market is growing steadily and is expected to reach $5.5 billion by 2018.
