Bangalore-based Mech Mocha, a mobile gaming startup has raised $5 million in a series A round of funding led by Accel Partners and Shunwei Capital with additional participation from existing investor Blume Ventures. The company will use the funds to develop new mobile game titles across casual and mid-core gaming categories for the Indian audience. It will also invest in behavioural analytics, multiplayer gaming, LiveOps (a marketing structure for gaming sector), and for monetization.
Mech Mocha had earlier raised $1 million in seed funding from Blume Ventures and Flipkart and was also a part of iAccelrator’s 2013 incubation program.
As of now, the company has an exclusive license for the game titled ‘Chhota Bheem – Himalayan Adventure’, based on 2016 movie of the same name. It claims that the game has been played by our 4 million users in India and as per Google Play data, the game has between 1 million—5 million installs. Mech Mocha added that it is currently “exploring partnerships” with gaming companies abroad to develop their own set of gaming titles. “With Shunwei, we aim to…introduce Chinese mobile games to the Indian audience,” Arpita Kapoor, CEO, Mech Mocha said in a statement.
The startup was founded in 2011 by IIT graduates including Arpita Kapoor, Mohit Rangaraju and Shilp Gupta. It currently has over 30 artists working who specialise in game development. Last year, the company hired ex-Zomato and Myntra product head Aditya Jalan to lead its product development initiatives.
Competition
Mech Mocha competes with growing number of startups focused on the mobile gaming sector, which includes startups like Nazara Games, Viaan Studios, 99Games, Dhruva Interactive, Games2win, PlaySimple among others. Reliance Entertainment also develops and publishes mobile games independently, but unlike the startups mentioned above, Reliance does not focus on the Indian audience.
These startup have also announced partnerships and acquisitions in the last couple of months:
-Nazara had expanded into gaming events in February, and launched an eSports platform for CS:GO and Dota2.
-Viaan Studios had signed a partnership with Eros in January for developing new titles.
-Dhruva was acquired by Sweden’s Starbreeze in December last year for reported value of $8.5 million.
-Play Simple had raised $4 million in November the same year.
