A gaming startup, based out of Bengaluru, Giga Fun Studios has recently raised $2.4 million in the seed round which was led by gaming venture capital funds ‘Lumikai’ and ‘Fireside Ventures.’ Other entities who also participated in this round included Kettleborough VC and Riverwalk Holdings.
Giga Fun Studios will be launching its first game in the second half of 2023. They will build a game specific to the need of Indian consumers. It was founded by Krishnendu Mukherjee, former AVP and head of game design at unicorn startup MPL, Rahul Daga, former director of products at Zynga and country head at m56 Studios, and Rahul Shekhar, former engineering lead at m56 Studios.
The company made a statement saying “the founders have collectively shipped and operated more than 10 games and have experience managing gaming P&Ls of over $100 million”. In an interview with the economic times Krishnendu Mukherjee said “In casual mobile games, we feel there’s a lot of potentials to culturally contextualize games. Most of the popular casual mobile games right now in India are global products like Candy Crush or Gardenscapes, etc. Our vision is to give Indian users something that is relatable and tailored to Indian preferences.” He further added that the gaming industry has seen tremendous growth in the recent past. Especially during the pandemic lockdowns people were stuck in their homes and subsequently, personal gaming consumption showed a significant increase.
“The gaming industry is such that a lot of success of a gaming studio depends on its first game. These funds will allow us to have a number of iterations. We will be building a lean team and keep our burn as low as possible, and we will also try to use our funds to acquire Indian players in a smart manner where we are able to see early profitability in our first few games,” he said.
Founding general partner Justin Shriram Keeling commented on the investment saying “According to our recently released India State of Gaming 2022 report, 80% of gamers show a high proclivity to play games based on Indian IP. We believe that culture-themed casual games have the potential to unlock massive disruption in the gaming space in India”.
