Bengaluru-based mobile gaming startup, Mech Mocha Game Studios has today announced that it has raised $5 million in its Series A round of funding. This investment was led by venture capital firms Accel Partners and China’s Shunwei Capital.
Along with these new investors, the company’s existing backers Blume Ventures also participated in the current funding round. The new investment comes after about one year of its seed funding round of $1 million, raised from Blume Ventures and Flipkart.
Commenting on the investment, Tuck Lye Koh, founding partner and CEO, Shunwei Capital, said,
The Indian mobile gaming sector is growing at a fast pace and holds great opportunity. We hope to share our experience in China and use it to create new opportunities for Mech Mocha in India.
The funding raised in this round will be utilized by the company to develop and launch new mobile-gaming titles across casual and mid-core gaming categories — targeted towards the Indian audience.
Apart from investing in localization, Mech Mocha plans to utilize part of the funds to build an integrated technology platform with capabilities in behavioural analytics, multiplayer, LiveOps, and monetisation.
Mech Mocha was launched by Arpita Kapoor and Mohit Rangaraju in 2014. Its first game — Puppet Punch, clocked a lakh downloads within the first four days of launch in January 2015.
The company develops and publishes freemium games, with Chhota Bheem — Himalayan Game being its first offering for the Indian market. It claims that over 4 million Indian users have played the game so far.
Mech Mocha now has a team of more than 30 artists and engineers who have previously worked with companies such as EA, Zynga, Disney, and DreamWorks.
The gaming startup space in the country has now become fairly active and some investment activity has been witnessed over the past few months. Earlier this year, 99Games Online Pvt. Ltd. raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Japanese investment firm Dream Incubator, along with Ascent Capital and Kalaari Capital. Last year, PlaySimple Games had secured $4 million in a Series A round led by SAIF Partners and IDG Ventures India. Nazara Technologies, a Mumbai-based game developer is even planning for a public listing in the year 2018.
