IndiGG bags $6 million from Sequoia India, Lightspeed, Animoca Brands, and others

IndiGG said it will use the funds raised to focus on "several key areas to fuel platform growth and onboard Indian gamers to the web3 world of play-to-earn".

IndiGG, the India sub-decentralised autonomous organisation (subDAO) of Philippine play-to-earn gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG) has secured $6 million seed funding from a clutch of investors such as Sequoia Capital India, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Animoca Brands.

Jump Capital, Variant Fund, Dune Ventures, Griffin Gaming Partners, Transcend Fund, Play Ventures, Backed and Sfermion, IVC, and Emfarsis are among others participating in the round.

That apart, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, hedge fund billionaire Alan Howard, Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal, Hungama Digital Media CEO Neeraj Roy, Mobile Premier League CEO Sai Srinivas, WazirX cofounder Siddharth Menon, AngelList India's Utsav Somani, DrumWorks founder Nameet Potnis, and WinZo CEO Paavan Nanda are also participating in the financing.

YGG had earlier led a $1 million pre-seed financing in IndiGG, which is also included in the current funding round.

Decentralised gaming guilds such as YGG provide gamers with requisite funds and tools for them to experience various play-to-earn titles in exchange for a cut of the player's earnings.

Play-to-earn games are based on blockchain technology and allows users to earn digital tokens or assets for playing games which they can sell either within the game or outside the game for real-world money.  Users typically need NFTs (non-fungible tokens) to participate in these games.

Several of these guilds have a subDAO for each game that is customised to focus on specific activities and assets of a particular game. While each subDAO has their own rules and conditions, they contribute earnings to the larger guild.

IndiGG is being built in association with Polygon (a secondary scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain) to create a Play-to-Earn gaming hub within India.

"Through the Polygon ecosystem we've already seen traction in player-owned virtual economies and we know the quality of games in development. Our goal in partnering with YGG for IndiGG is to onboard 400 million people to Web3 on the path to mass adoption," said Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal.

IndiGG said it will use the funds raised to focus on "several key areas to fuel platform growth and onboard Indian gamers to the web3 world of play-to-earn". The proceeds will also be used to expand the team, local awareness of the play-to-earn model, and organising community events.

The subDAO said it will soon support NFT assets for play-to-earn games such as Axie infinity, Pegaxy, Fancy Birds, Nyan Heroes, and Nitro League before onboarding new games for the Indian market.

It will also provide scholarships to community members "who’ve shown dedication to the guild and potential to excel in a certain game". This will enable members to rent the NFT, enabling them to start playing without having to buy the NFTs.

Polygon Studios and their ecosystem of Web3 games — including Zed Run, Skyweaver by Horizon Games, Decentraland, and Decentral Games — will ensure new IndiGG players (scholars) have access to the latest releases, it said in a statement.

"India is set to take a leadership role in establishing this new web3 frontier. We have the talent, capital and confidence to ensure that we are in the driver’s seat and games are the perfect vehicle to engage our next generation of talent," said Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Play-to-earn games gain steam in India

Play-to-Earn gaming is gaining traction in India, with several gaming firms eyeing a piece of the market.

On January 17, nCore Games had raised $10 million in Series A funding to expand its properties into metaverse and non-fungible token (NFTs) as well as launch new games in the Web3 and play-to-earn space. The round was led by Galaxy Interactive and Animoca Brands with participation from Polygon and HyperEdge.

Dream Sports CEO Harsh Jain had recently said in an industry event that play-to-earn is emerging as a new business model in the gaming sector and they are exploring a foray into the nascent market.

"What we've been doing all this time is play-to-win but now there's an entirely new model being built around play-to-earn, which I think is phenomenally interesting since you don't have to stake something that you can lose. You can only lose an opportunity to gain something" he said.

Moneycontrol had reported on December 24 that the emergence of blockchain and NFT-based gaming firms is expected to be one of the key trends in the sector in 2022.