Bengaluru, NFAPost: Lumikai, India’s pioneering gaming and interactive media fund, announced the launch of its second fund targeting a $50 million corpus from global investors. The funds will be deployed in pre-seed to series A investments into India’s leading gaming and interactive media founders.
Lumikai Fund I has $40 million under management. Aside from the global corpus, for the first time, Lumikai is also inviting domestic Rupee capital with the setup of a dedicated $10 million AIF for Indian LPs. This will bring Lumikai’s total investment into India’s gaming and interactive media sector to over $100M. The fund has already completed its oversubscribed first close.
Lumikai Fund II investors include marquee names from the global world of gaming, including publicly listed Japan-based gaming giants Mixi and Colopl, South Korean multi-billion-dollar conglomerates Krafton and Smilegate, Finland based decacorn Supercell, Indian strategics including Nazara and select large Indian family offices including the Jeejeebhoys, KCT Group, DSP Kothari, and Sattva Group.
High net worth individuals also participated in the raise, including Ben Feder (former CEO of Take Two Interactive), Jon Vlassopulos (CEO, Napster), Pankaj Gupta (founder, Gulf Islamic Investments) and Akshat Rathee (Founder, Nodwin Gaming).
Fund II will continue investing in India’s $2.6B gaming market (set to grow to $8.6B by FY2027), catalyzing early-stage sector winners to continue delivering outlier returns. The fund will invest across five key thesis areas:
1. Gaming content, original IP and digital media
2. UGC platforms and creator economy
3. Tools, technology and infrastructure
4. Companies leveraging “systems of play”, applied game mechanics and interactive touchpoints across value chains and
5. Frontier bets, including mixed reality, generative AI, virtual identities, edge computing etc.
Lumikai Fund II already has a healthy pipeline of investments planned for deployment, including three deals at term sheet stage for companies built by industry veterans in plays within the content, platforms and frontier thesis areas.
Lumikai Founding GP Salone Sehgal commented Lumikai is excited to catalyse India’s gaming and interactive media revolution.
“Interactive media lies at the confluence of new technology, culture and emerging media. Since the beginning, our ambition was to unlock a new asset class for investors by turbo-charging India’s most ambitious founders within the ecosystem. Over the course of the last 3 years, we have seen 1400+ deals and seen the industry attract investor interest, deepen founder quality and achieve liquidity events,” said Lumikai Founding GP Salone Sehgal.
Lumikai Founding GP Salone Sehgal said the fund will continue to remain bullish on the long-term potential of the India interactive market and this is opportunity to build on the foundation the company has laid.
Lumikai Founding GP Justin Shriram Keeling said Lumikai was created ground-up to be a focal point for the next generation of superstar gaming and interactive media founders.
“These sunrise sectors have seen tremendous tailwinds since we launched the fund, and we are privileged to have a front row seat in this revolution. We’d like to thank our AAA roster of global and domestic LPs for supporting us as we continue to be at the forefront of this once in a generation inflection point,” said Lumikai Founding GP Justin Shriram.
About Lumikai
Lumikai combines the Latin word for “light” and the Japanese word for “tribe”. Lumikai is the pioneering VC fund catalysing India’s gaming & interactive media revolution.
Lumikai India’s first seed stage venture capital fund operating exclusively in India’s interactive entertainment ecosystem. Lumikai are a 100% operator driven, partner led fund with founding partners who have been in the gaming, media & entertainment business with combined experience of over 3 decades.
At Lumikai, we are building a tribe of India’s most forward thinking, creative and talented founders. The leadership team combines decades of strategic experience and sector knowledge while leveraging all-star local and global networks to help propel founders to success.
From Fund I, we have already backed some of India’s leading games and interactive media companies including Bombay Play (building global hypersocial, cross-platform games), Loco (India’s leading game streaming platform), Elo Elo (creator-led, social gaming, live streaming platform), Studio Sirah (midcore games for a new generation of sophisticated Indian gamers) and several others. Our portfolio has collectively raised ~$100M, employs 300+ people and seen co-investments from marquee global investors.
