Vernacular Gaming Platform Winzo has nabbed $18Mn in series B round led by Singapore based Makers Fund and Courtside Ventures. Existing investors Kalaari Capital and Bellerive Capital also invested in the round. Alongside, several individual investors have equally participated in this round. According to reports, this is Makers Fund and Courtside Ventures’ first investment in India.
We could not access the regulatory filings at the time of filing this story to give the breakdown of Winzo’s series B round. However, according to Entrackr, Makers Fund has contributed Rs 60 crore while Courtside Ventures has infused 41.25 crore in the round. Existing investors Kalaari Capital and Bellerive Capital have invested 7.5 crore each in the round.
The company has allotted 618,160 Series B CCPS shares for Rs 1904.49 per shares to raise the total amount.
With the Winzo app available in 10 different Indian languages, the company is trying to disrupt the vernacular E-sports gaming industry. Not surprisingly, today most of the Winzo customers hail from tier 2 and tier 3 cities of India.
Techpluto had spoken to Winzo’s co-founder and CEO Paavan Nanda in an exclusive interview in September last year. This was barely a few months after the company had raised $5 Mn in series A round.
In the interview, Nanda said that Winzo not only aims to consolidate its market in India alone but also in international markets like Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Middle Eastern Countries, and African Countries. Techpluto could not independently ascertain whether Winzo currently operates in these markets.
Nanda further added that the company plans to add 100 games by 2020 on the platform, to make WinZO an entertainment powerhouse.
According to a report by KPMG, the gaming segment was the outperformers in the M&E Industry in FY19, growing at a rate of 41.6% to reach at a size of INR 62 billion with robust growth in both ARPU’s and the numbers of gamers in India (Estimated at 300 million in FY19).
