LightFury Games launches India studio; strengthens its leadership team

LightFury co-founders Karan Shroff, Anurag Banerjee, and Tina Balachandran with the team

LightFury Games, a gaming firm co-founded by former Unacademy chief marketing officer Karan Shroff, on July 9 unveiled its first studio in Bengaluru.

This development comes months after the firm bagged $8.5 million seed investment led by Blume Ventures and participation from Japanese mobile entertainment firm Mixi and micro venture capital firm Gemba Capital, besides angel investors such as Cred founder Kunal Shah and Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal in April.

At the time, Shroff had stated plans of using the funds raised to establish game studios in India and in the United Kingdom and hire top talent for these studios.

Shroff had teamed up with former Unacademy and Tencent Games executive Tina Balachandran and gaming industry veteran Anurag Banerjee to launch his new venture in January 2024. Shroff had quit Unacademy in September 2022 after a three-year stint, during which he was also elevated as the edtech firm's first partner, equivalent to a co-founder position.

Shroff is serving as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Bengaluru-based startup, while Banerjee will be the group chief product and technology officer (CPTO) and Balachandran will be the chief people and operations officer.

LightFury Games intends to build high-quality AAA titles with an initial focus on mobile games and later expand to other platforms, including consoles. AAA games are titles that typically have big budgets for both development and marketing purposes.

The 60-seater India studio, located near Bengaluru International Airport, includes state-of-the-art equipment and infrastructure required to develop these games, the company said.

New leadership appointments

Along with this announcement, LightFury Games has also appointed gaming industry veteran Justin Farren as Chief Creative Officer for its India studio. Based in Bengaluru, he will lead the India studio and will be responsible for leading the creative vision and design strategies for the company's games in development.

Before joining LightFury, Farren served as executive producer and product director at Wargaming, one of the prominent players in the free-to-play MMO (massively multiplayer online) market. Prior to that, he was the producer and creative director for the acclaimed series Assassin’s Creed and Skull and Bones at Ubisoft Singapore. Farren has over 20 years of game development experience, the company said.

"The opening of our state-of-the-art studio in Bangalore marks our first step toward reinventing gaming experiences in India and developing world-class AAA titles from this region. The LightFury leadership team has built and shipped over 40 AAA titles across various genres. We will continue to strengthen our capabilities, as top-tier talent from around the globe joins our India studio" Shroff said in a statement.

Banerjee said that the Indian gaming industry holds immense potential, yet it hasn't achieved its rightful prominence and the firm hopes to change that narrative with its leadership team and Bengaluru studio.

"At LightFury Games, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of creativity and innovation to deliver unparalleled gaming experiences. Our goal is to build a powerhouse that produces groundbreaking AAA titles, setting new standards in the industry” said Farren in a statement.

LightFury Games had earlier roped in former Improbable and Electronic Arts executive Chong-U Lim as its chief technology officer (CTO) and long-time Improbable executive Daniel Hall as the company's senior director of engineering.

Lim, who has over 14 years of technical engineering expertise, will lead the UK Studio. He has previously held leadership positions at companies such as Improbable, Playfish, Electronic Arts, and Fuse Energy. Lim holds a PhD in Computer Science and AI from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Hall, on the other hand, will split his time between the United Kingdom and India. Hall was previously with the gaming studio Improbable as its engineering head for the United Kingdom, where his work included developing technology frameworks for multiplayer games across diverse genres. He has over 12 years of experience in the gaming industry.

LightFury Games' launch comes as India's gaming sector is showing signs of increasing maturity in terms of user behaviour and their spending habits, thereby paving the way for local gaming studios to attempt building more ambitious, complex games.

India is the fastest-growing games market in Asia, both in terms of revenue and gamers, according to Niko Partners, a market research and consulting firm that covers video games, e-sports, and streaming in the continent. The combined mobile, PC and console gaming revenue is projected to reach $943 million in 2024, up 13.6 percent from $830 million in 2023.

The market is expected to surpass $1 billion in revenue in 2025 and reach $1.4 billion in 2028, growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.1 percent, it said. These figures do not include revenues from real-money games or exports.