Singapore, 31 AUG 2020 - Potato Play, a Singapore-based mobile games publisher that aims to take hybrid-casual games developed in Asia to global success, announced today that it has raised US$1.75M in a seed round. The funding round is led by the global technology venture capital fund, BEENEXT. Atlas Ventures is participating, while Play Ventures, who had previously invested US$500k in a pre-seed round in January, is following on.
“The hypercasual trend has peaked. Hybrid-casual games that combine the simple mechanics of hypercasuals with the deeper monetization and long-term retention of hardcore games are the next big wave”, said CEO Vincent Low.
He adds, “Asian game developers, with decades of experience in hardcore games, and the ability to execute and iterate quickly on trends, are an ideal fit to innovate in the hybrid-casual space. We use proven metrics and markers to identify these high potential games early-on and offer win-win deals to developers to publish and scale them. With this seed round, we will be limitless in what we can achieve for developers”.
The company has achieved early success with this method, leading to hit titles like Merge Quest and Merge Rush Z, with 15M downloads of their published games. Data from the Potato Play SDK that is embedded in the games is then further analysed to fine tune the game selection and nurturing process.
“Our founding team members have worked with the best in the business around the world in companies like Microsoft Game Studios, Digital Chocolate, King, Ubisoft, and Gameloft. This team brings together global expertise and local knowledge to find high potential games before anyone else. Raising this round in the middle of a global pandemic, we are deeply humbled, as well as energized, by our investors’ confidence in our team and mission”, said co-founder Kingsley Joseph.
“We were very impressed with the team, and their data-driven approach to identifying high-potential games”, said Hero Choudhary, Partner at BEENEXT. “We expect to see a lot of game-changing innovation from Asian game developers, and Potato Play is in the exact right spot to identify and help scale the most high potential innovators.”
The company plans to use the funds to scale its sourcing and marketing operations, as well as investing in technology assets.
About Potato Play
Potato Play is a Singapore-based publisher helping mobile games by Asian developers attain global success. Through a unique game-sourcing and evaluation process, an embedded platform SDK, and world-class marketing and monetization capabilities, Potato Play has successfully brought over 20 games to market. Potato Play’s games have been downloaded over 10 million times, and includes hits like Merge Quest, Crossing Gaps and Pocket Racing. With a full pipeline of over 20 new games evaluated every month, Potato Play is looking to scale its success to the next level with this round of funding.
Developers interested in working with Potato Play can contact them through www.potatoplay.com or dev@potatoplay.com
Meet The Team
Vincent Low, CEO
Vincent Low has over 17 years of game-making experience, honed at companies like Microsoft Game Studios in the UK, where he worked on Kinect Sports for the Xbox 360. Based in China for the last 8 years, Vincent built and ran the first games platform within WeChat in China, which grew to 10 million daily active users. While games by established Asian publishers were top grossers worldwide, Vincent realized that many independent Chinese developers faced significant regulatory challenges marketing their titles in China. Inspired by their situation, Vincent came up with the idea of Potato Play, a data-driven publisher that brings games from Asia to global markets.
Kingsley Joseph, GM
Kingsley is a serial entrepreneur with 20 years of experience in product management, marketing and bootstrapping startups. In previous roles, Kingsley created the first social media product at Salesforce, pioneered the use of data-driven liveops for games at Digital Chocolate that put 13 of their games in the top 100, bootstrapped a game studio in Bangalore, and co-founded 2 startups.
Liang Lijin, CTO
Airy Liang has 10 years programming experience with a deep understanding of BI automation, analysis and coding. He was previously at Ming Dynasty Network Technologies.
Carole Le Van, VP of Marketing
Carole Le Van has 6 years of experience in marketing and user acquisition at GameLoft, Ubisoft and Wargaming and has managed multi-million marketing campaigns over several hit titles.
Henji Tan, Director of Product
Henji Tan has 10 years experience in product management and game design at Cartoon Network, King, Nonstop Games and Ubisoft. He is an expert in Free-to-Play (F2P) games, Asian monetization techniques and global audience preferences.
About BEENEXT
BEENEXT is an early-stage focus venture capital firm managed by serial tech entrepreneurs since 2015. The partners have hands-on capabilities and have been focusing on assisting founders in over 180 early-stage tech startups. BEENEXT aims to establish a platform of the founders, by the founders and for the founders across the globe primarily in India, South East Asia, and Japan with their own operational experiences, network and perspectives.
For more information, please visit www.beenext.com.
About Play Ventures
Play Ventures is the leading early stage gaming venture capital firm with offices in Singapore and Helsinki, Finland. Founded by gaming industry veterans Henric Suuronen and Harri Manninen, who have made successful exits to King and Disney respectively, Play Ventures invests globally in pre-seed and seed stage gaming startups and focuses on free-to-play mobile and PC opportunities as well as gaming services startups.
For more information, please visit www.playventures.vc.
About Atlas Ventures
Atlas Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm based in Singapore looking to invest in exceptional industry-defining tech and tech-enabled businesses operating within fast-growing and overlooked markets in APAC. The fund’s area of focus currently covers interactive media, privacy & security, and B2B SaaS & enterprise tech.
For more information, please visit http://atlas.ventures/
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