Gaming Fund under the umbrella of Hyderabad headquartered SucSEED Indovation Fund continues to work with various partners to discover and support gaming start-ups with seed funding and organize mentorship support from successful Gaming Founders & experienced Influencers.
SucSEED Indovation Fund and STPI led IMAGE CoE had announced their collaboration earlier to aid the gaming startup ecosystem. Gaming startups would be incubated with STPI IMAGE COE and SucSEED Innovation Fund would invest in the select Gaming Startups from the cohort. Up to $100,000 in funding will be offered for early-stage product development. Several successful Gaming Founders have joined the SucSEED Indovation Fund to create a Gaming Sub-Fund for this purpose and they bring the immense experience as value-add alongside their capital.
United Gamers Hideout (UGH) ESports and Stareout games are the two such startups from Cohort-1 that have received funding from SucSEED Indovation Gaming Fund through this partnership.
UGH creates innovative esports IPs that enables professional gaming in India. Unlike other esports leagues, UGH offers a unique dual system of talent hunt feeding into a franchise style league. Providing a platform for esports teams from around the world to scout players for professional contracts to represent them in our new franchised league. UGH has already established a strong event roadmap for the next two years including tournament licenses and strategic partnerships.
Abhisek Moharana, Founder and CEO at United Gamers Hideout said, “In spite of the pandemic we have seen a huge growth in professional gaming in India. UGH is filling the gap in the market with regards to upskilling the aspiring gamers and creating the high quality content the esports community craves for”. He further added that “The seed funding we raised from SucSEED Indovation and such established Gaming Angel Investors will help us in hiring the best talent and for accelerating our journey to create the biggest esports IP of India”.
Stareout games is a hyper casual game studio. Unlike other game studios, Stareout takes a regional content approach for giving a more immersive gaming experience for users. During the past 6 months, Stareout was able to launch and attract over 100k organic users across their games.
Vamsi Raju, Founder and CEO at Stareout games said, “Hyper Casual gaming is a low commitment and quick stress relief alternative for long form entertainment. We are building gaming experiences that are tailored to the desi audience and are worth playing”. He further added that “The seed fund raised from SucSEED Indovation will help us prove the product market fit for regional based games which people can play in their local languages, targeting tier 2 and tier 3 cities primarily. We will be working on creating new and unique user acquisition strategies to get users in India at the lowest possible cost.”
Vikrant Varshney, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of SucSEED Indovation Fund, said “The global gaming market was valued at USD 173.70 billion in 2020, and it is expected to reach a value of USD 314.40 billion by 2026, registering a CAGR of 9.64% over 2021-2026. We believe that this relationship will increase our footprint & exposure in the gaming community by assisting and aiding these early stage startups in their growth and development, as the gaming sector has a high potential.”
Sridhar Muppidi, Founder of PurpleTalk and of YesGnome, one of the largest game development and publishing companies in India, who is one of the key stakeholders in the SucSEED Indovation Gaming Sub-Fund; said: “India, with its immense talent pool, can potentially grab a sizable chunk of the $100B global gaming industry. However, there aren’t enough companies going after this opportunity, so some of us in the industry figured the best way to accelerate this is by investing at a pre-seed stage in a large number of gaming entrepreneurs. To achieve this, most of the top gaming enterprises and companies in India have come together to launch this Gaming fund with SucSEED.”
SucSEED Indovation Fund is a SEBI-registered Cat-I AIF-VC Fund-Angel Fund that focuses on early-stage start-ups involved in addressing mass-market problems with the help of deep-tech breakthroughs. Their primary funding focus is on Seed to Growth and Pre-Series A-stage companies. The Fund’s General partners have a combined expertise of more than 100 years in Technology, Venture Capital, and the startup ecosystem, and have invested in more than 70 companies already and have successful exits to their credit.
IMAGE Center of Entrepreneurship is an initiative by Software Tech Parks of India (STPI) in conjunction with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the Government Of Telangana. The IMAGE CoE Accelerator Program is a one-of-a-kind program that provides mentorship, office space, seed funding, and other incentives to entrepreneurs in the gaming, computer vision, artificial intelligence, and VFX industries. IMAGE CoE Accelerator Program is currently running its pilot cohorts and has started registrations for the next cohort.
