Who are the Swiggy founders and what led them to invest in gaming startup Felicity Games?

India’s leading founders of cutting-edge tech companies, such as Swiggy’s Sriharsha Majety and Nandan Reddy, Cred’s Kunal Shah, and Kratos Studios’ Manish Agarwal, are supporting casual game developer and publisher Felicity Games. This investment highlights a burgeoning interest in India’s gaming sector.

Felicity Games has raised $700,000 in its pre-seed funding round, with contributions from DeVC, a pre-seed venture capital firm, and Visceral Capital, a venture capital firm.

Angel investors, including Google Cloud APAC gaming head Sameer Pitalwalla, The Moms Co co-founder Mohit Sadaani, and WOW Skin Science co-founder Manish Chowdhary, also participated in this funding round.

Founded in 2023 by former Swiggy executive Anurag Choudhary, Felicity Games has launched over 10 game titles within a year. These games, available for free download on Google Play Store and Apple App Store, attract over a million monthly users across 14 countries, the company reports.

Based in Bengaluru, the startup quickly prototypes and tests casual games for commercial viability using its proprietary framework ‘Pokhran’, scaling only the successful ones. It also collaborates with studios and brands to co-create intellectual properties.

“Felicity Games is poised to build a multi-million-dollar casual gaming business from India for the world, leveraging our cost and skill advantages,” Choudhary said in a statement.

The company plans to use the raised funds to test 10 more games by March 2025, aiming to increase revenue tenfold by the end of this year.

Recently, Felicity Games launched two titles, ‘Seek & Find’ and ‘Nova Solitaire’, which are economically positive in the US and other western markets, achieving over 100,000 downloads within three months.

“Felicity has a unique vision to harness the growing ecosystem of Indie developers, producing high-quality game prototypes at a fraction of the cost. They combine commercial testing with iterations on unconventional channels to drive risk-adjusted growth for new IPs, offering developer-friendly publishing for the indie ecosystem,” says DeVC’s Divyanshi Chowdhary.

India’s mobile gaming sector has experienced several early-stage funding rounds in the past year, underscoring the country’s potential as a global gaming hub.

Casual puzzle gaming studio QuriousBit raised $2 million in seed funding to develop 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 Lumikai, a gaming and interactive media-focused venture fund, and Fireside Ventures in January 2023.

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

LightFury Games, co-founded by former Unacademy chief marketing officer Karan Shroff, secured $8.5 million in seed investment led by Blume Ventures, with participation from Japanese mobile entertainment firm Mixi and micro venture capital firm Gemba Capital. Angel investors, including Cred founder Kunal Shah and Unacademy co-founder Gaurav Munjal, also participated in this 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 covering video games, e-sports, and streaming in the continent. Combined mobile, PC, and console gaming revenue is projected to reach $943 million in 2024, a 13.6 percent increase from $830 million in 2023.

The market is expected to exceed $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. These figures exclude revenues from real-money games or exports.