India’s Loco has raised $42 million led by South Korea’s early-stage venture fund, Hashed, as a gaming frenzy takes hold in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people
Bengaluru, NFAPost: India’s Loco has raised $42 million (Rs 330 crore) led by South Korea’s early-stage venture fund, Hashed, as a gaming frenzy takes hold in the country of nearly 1.4 billion people.
New investors including Makers Fund, outsourcing billionaire Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures, and Korea Investment Partners participated in the Series A round, along with existing investors such as Krafton Inc., Lumikai Ltd. and Hiro Capital, the live-streamed games company said in an announcement on Thursday.
The capital infusion will take the two-year-old startup’s valuation to about $200 million, said two people familiar with the deal who didn’t want to be named. A spokeswoman for Loco Interactive Pte, as the company is officially named, declined to comment on the valuation.
The funds will support acceleration in streaming technologies, content creation and developing the gamer and creator ecosystem, Loco said in its release.
Live-streamed games are still relatively new in India unlike in countries like the U.S., South Korea and Japan where it is a mainstream form of entertainment. Indian users play and access live-streams mainly via their mobile devices, whereas console-based and PC-based gaming are popular in mature gaming markets.
Loco Cofounder Anirudh Pandita said India has 400 million gamers currently and younger Indians are spending a significant amount of time in the virtual world, and gaming is breaking urban and rural boundaries.
“Loco’s daily user numbers have grown over 15 times since January of last year and “live watch hours”, the amount of time users spend on live-streamed games, has grown nearly 80 times,” said Loco Cofounder Anirudh Pandita.
Pandita and Ashwin Suresh, Loco’s other cofounders, met as engineering undergraduates at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and went on to work on Wall Street before starting Pocket Aces Pvt., a digital studio creating streaming content to provide an alternative to traditional television entertainment, along with a third founder Aditi Shrivastava. The gaming startup spun away from Pocket Aces last year and Shrivastava, married to Suresh, continues to lead Pocket Aces.
Hashed Cofounder and Partner Ethan Kim said India is one of the most interesting gaming markets. “It is a reality that 40% of its gaming population belong to the 10-30 year age group that forms the bedrock of gaming and e-sports communities worldwide,” said Hashed Cofounder and Partner Ethan Kim.
Loco has been a pioneer in the live game streaming and esports sector in India, paving the way for gaming to go from a niche hobby to mainstream national interest. The platform is home to India’s most popular streamers such as Sc0ut, Mavi, Godlike’s Jonathan, Villager Esports and 8Bit-Thug.
Loco has built highly engaged communities across various games including BGMI, Call of Duty Mobile, Clash of Clans, Grand Theft Auto (GTA), and Valorant. The platform houses India’s top esports teams like Godlike, XO, Revenant Esports, and Hyderabad Hydras. It has hosted the country’s largest tournaments in partnership with global publishers like Krafton, Activision, Ubisoft, and Riot Games.
Loco has grown rapidly over the last year, with daily active viewers scaling by 15x, monthly active viewers scaling by 8x, monthly active streamers scaling by 5x, and live watch hours scaling by 78x since Jan 2021. Today, highly active users spend over 1 hour daily on Loco, making it the gaming community’s platform of choice for a seamless streaming and highly engaging fan experience.
“We believe this new investment round will enable Loco to solidify its dominant position in-game streaming and eventually provide the Indian gaming community with cutting edge Web3 products and services.”
The company believes that gaming will define the customer entertainment experience over the next decade. Powered by 5G, gaming will make entertainment more immersive, providing users with immensely enjoyable social experiences in virtual worlds.
In addition, Web3 will transform the nature of ownership of virtual goods, allowing fans to participate in the entertainment process in a more meaningful manner than has ever been possible before. With these tailwinds driving consumer behaviour, Loco wants to build the social experience platform for the virtual world, serving the over 700 million Indians who will experience these virtual worlds in the coming years.
