Swiggy founders, Cred's Kunal Shah, DeVC, others invest in gaming startup Felicity Games

Anurag Choudhary, Founder & CEO, Felicity Games

India's marquee founders of new-age tech companies, including Swiggy's Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, Cred's Kunal Shah, and Kratos Studios' Manish Agarwal are backing casual game developer and publisher Felicity Games, underscoring a growing interest in the country's gaming industry.

Felicity Games has secured $700,000 in its pre-seed funding round, which also saw participation from DeVC, a pre-seed venture capital firm, and Visceral Capital, a venture capital firm.

Angel investors such as Google Cloud APAC gaming head Sameer Pitalwalla, The Moms Co co-founder Mohit Sadaani, and WOW Skin Science co-founder Manish Chowdhary were also part of the funding round.

Felicity Games was founded in 2023 by former Swiggy executive Anurag Choudhary and has launched over 10 game titles within a year. These games, available as a free download on Google Play Store and Apple App Store, have been played by more than a million monthly users across 14 countries, the company said.

The Bengaluru-based startup says it rapidly prototypes and tests casual games for commercial viability using its proprietary framework 'Pokhran', and subsequently scales only the successful ones. It also partners with studios and brands to co-create intellectual properties.

"Given our cost and skill advantages, Felicity Games is well placed to build a multi-million-dollar casual gaming business from India for the world," Choudhary said in a statement.

Felicity Games plans to use the funds raised towards testing 10 more such games by March 2025. It aims to scale revenue by 10-fold by the end of this year.

The startup says it recently launched two titles ‘Seek & Find’ and ‘Nova Solitaire’ that are unit economics positive in the US and other western markets with over 100,000 downloads within a period of three months.

"Felicity has a unique vision to mobilise the growing ecosystem of Indie developers with the capability of producing high-quality game prototypes at a fraction of the cost. Felicity combines an objective approach to commercial testing with iterations on non-conventional channels to drive risk-adjusted growth for new IPs, unlocking developer-friendly publishing for the indie ecosystem,” says DeVC's Divyanshi Chowdhary.

India's mobile gaming space has seen a slew of early stage funding rounds in the past year, reflecting the country's growing potential as a global gaming hub.

Casual puzzle gaming studio QuriousBit bagged $2 million in seed funding to build puzzle games for global audiences in September 2023. Social casual games studio HighXP secured $2.2 million in seed funding led by 3one4 Capital with participation from Prime Venture Partners and Gemba Capital in June 2023.

Giga Fun Studios, another casual gaming startup, raised $2.4 million in seed funding led by gaming and interactive media-focused venture fund Lumikai and early stage investment firm Fireside Ventures in January 2023.

Liquidnitro Games, a Hyderabad-based live service and game production studio, also landed $5.25 million in seed funding led by Nexus Venture Partners in March.

LightFury Games, a gaming firm co-founded by former Unacademy chief marketing officer Karan Shroff, secured $8.5 million seed investment led by Blume Ventures and participation from Japanese mobile entertainment firm Mixi and micro venture capital firm Gemba Capital. Angel investors such as Cred founder Kunal Shah and Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal also participated in the funding round.

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.