India’s online gaming market is likely to become $531 million in size by 2025. (File Photo)
Walmart-owned Flipkart, which had invested in social gaming startup Mech Mocha in its early-stage round back in 2015, on Tuesday, announced the acquisition of its gaming team and intellectual property (IP). The startup, which operates real-time multiplayer gaming app Hello Play including ludo, carrom, cricket, and other games, would allow Flipkart to enhance its gaming strategy as it looks to develop new formats to boost user engagement on its gaming platform. Founded in 2014 by Arpita Kapoor and Mohit Rangaraju, Mech Mocha had raised $9.9 million so far, according to Crunchbase. Accel Partners, Blume Ventures, and Shunwei Capital were other investors in Mech Mocha.
The startup’s team would report to Prakash Sikaria, Vice-President at Flipkart. “We look forward to being a part of the Flipkart ecosystem and leveraging the Flipkart Cloud Platform, Super Coins, Reward store, and Flipkart Ads platform to strengthen the platform for our users,” said Arpita Kapoor, Co-Founder & CEO, Mech Mocha. “We see many first-time e-commerce users come online through formats such as video and games, as they build familiarity with the medium. Our observations of Flipkart GameZone, reflect this trend,” said Sikaria.
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India’s online gaming market is likely to grow at a CAGR of 12.5 per cent to become $531 million in size by 2025 even as the user penetration is expected to hit 10.2 per cent in five years, according to Statista. Moreover, the average revenue per user (ARPU) is likely to amount to $2.68. Globally, China will generate maximum revenues — $4,523 million in 2020. Mech Mocha, available in seven Indian languages has more than 10 games in its app.
Flipkart took initial steps into gaming with a few micro games before it’s 2017 The Big Billion Days event. The initiative soon evolved into Flipkart setting up the games and gamification team and launched two games — Play and Win, and Bid and Win, according to a company blog post written in July this year. Flipkart currently runs GameZone on its marketplace for its customers to win gifts and deals.
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