Venture capital firm Kalaari Capital has invested an undisclosed capital in a seed round in Atirath Gaming Technology Pvt Ltd, the gaming company said on Monday.
The Hyderabad-based platform plans to build a metaverse based on economic model, while boosting its products and expanding team, with the fundraise.
Atirath was rolled out in mid 2020 by Shiva Bayyapunedi and Ramachandra Raju. The company claims to have a team size of 15 members.
“As the model evolves, we see a lot of innovation happening in a centralised and decentralised metaverse world. Business models like play-to-earn, play-to-collect with technology innovation in blockchain based solutions in NFT (non-fungible tokens) will fuel phenomenal growth.
Players are no longer passive and new platforms will be enabling them to contribute and monetize from the success of games,” said Bayyapunedi.
The platform said that it is betting on the $2.2 billion mobile gaming market that is poised to touch $7 billion by 2025, with a 40% growth on a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate basis).
Further, it said that India ranks among the top five mobile gaming markets in the world due to high internet penetration and low cost of internet play.
Atirath claimed that an average Indian consumes over 8.5 hours of gaming content per week.
Both Bayyapunedi and Raju worked at Apalya Technologies, which was set up by the former and was later acquired by digital content platform Arré.
The company said that it aims to create game metaverse with geographic, economic, and social experience in strategy genre connecting players, content creators and game publishers.
“Mythological games like God Of War and Assassin’s Creed have worked out very well across the world, selling over 200 million copies and we think the Indian Mythology is still an untapped opportunity since the rich history of India offers a high possibility of a hit global IP being built out of here.
This aligned with NFT gameplay is a huge opportunity to create an immersive experience,” said Vamshi Reddy, Partner Kalaari Capital.
Apalya Technologies was founded by Bayyapunedi with Reddy.
