Lumikai Launches New $50M Game Fund Backed by Supercell, Krafton, and More
Indian gaming venture capital firm Lumikai has recently announced the establishment of a new game fund worth $50 million. This fund, which is the second of its kind for Lumikai, has attracted investments from industry giants such as Krafton, Supercell, and TakeTwo Interactive boss Ben Feder. The primary focus of this fund is to invest in early-stage game developers and creators. According to reliable sources, Lumikai is currently in advanced discussions to finalize at least three deals with undisclosed parties. GamesIndustry.biz reveals that the fund will concentrate on five key areas:
- Gaming content, original IP, and digital media
- User-generated content platforms and the creator economy
- Tools, technology, and infrastructure
- Companies that apply “systems of play” and game mechanics in other sectors
- Frontier bets such as mixed reality, generative AI, and edge computing
Investing in the Booming Indian Gaming Market
For several years now, the Indian gaming market has been a topic of great interest in the industry, especially when it comes to mobile gaming. With projections suggesting that India will soon surpass China in terms of the number of players, there have been ongoing discussions on how to make game releases and development more profitable and appealing to investors. Lumikai, with its history of actively funding various Indian startups like CloudFeather Games, is expected to prioritize mobile gaming in the future.
In a previous statement made by Justin Shriram Keeling, a general partner at Lumikai, he highlighted the unique aspects of the Indian market from an investor’s perspective. Keeling stated, “The biggest difference is that India is a mobile-first market. India didn’t witness the gradual evolution of gaming from 2D to 3D, consoles, and PC, and then to mobile like Japan or China. Four years ago, an Indian telco called Jio introduced essentially free 4G data to hundreds of millions of people, which became a game-changer for India’s digital economy, including games.”
Keeling further added, “Today, we have over 800 million smartphone users in India, and half a billion of them play games. It’s an incredibly vast market, but the majority of it is mobile-based.”
Considering the recent predictions about the massive growth of the Indian gaming market, reaching a record high of $8.6 billion as reported by AppTweak and AppsFlyer, Lumikai’s involvement is expected to accelerate the growth of local mobile startups in India.