Mobile game publisher based in Singapore has raised $500k from Play Ventures, to expand sourcing & data-driven publishing.
Mobile Games Publisher Potato Play Raises $500k Funding To Take Asian Mobile Games Global
Singapore, 2 March 2020 - Potato Play, a Singapore-based mobile games publisher today announced that it has raised $500k in a pre-seed funding round led by Play Ventures. The raise will be used to grow Potato Play’s marketing and product management team, and expand partnership development in China, South Korea, and Vietnam.
Potato Play is founded by gaming executives with a combined 50 years of experience. Working at Microsoft Game Studios, Digital Chocolate, King, and Gameloft, the team has worked on global titles such as Kinect Sports, Asphalt 9, World of Warships and Cartoon Network Match Land. 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 in less than a year. Potato Play’s games have been downloaded over 10 million times, and include hits like Merge Quest, Crossing Gaps and Pocket Racing.
“Asian games are dominating global top charts - more than half of the top 10 revenue grossing mobile games are made by established Asian developers. But startup studios in Asia face steep challenges in marketing and monetizing them, even in their home countries,” says Potato Play’s CEO, Vincent Low. “Potato Play’s mission is to turn these gems into worldwide hits, using our expertise in product management and performance marketing.”
The round was led by Play Ventures, the premier early stage gaming venture capital fund. Henric Suuronen, Founding Partner at Play Ventures, says, “We’re excited to back Potato Play. The team has the winning combination of world-class product development and publishing experience, and a strong network of Asia’s most talented gamemakers.”
Tracy Di, the creator of ‘Merge Quest’, Potato Play’s breakthrough title, says “‘Merge Quest’ could not have reached and monetized millions of users without Potato Play. Their understanding of global markets and audiences helped us to turn it into a hit.”
The publisher plans to utilise this funding round to grow their marketing and product management team in Singapore, and expand their partnership development in China. They also aim to embark on partnership sourcing in other Asian markets.
“We have our sights set on working with mobile game makers across Asia, particularly in China, as well as South Korea and Vietnam,” says co-founder, Kingsley Joseph. “The team is ready to use our experience to help more Asian game developers take their games to the top of the global charts.”
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 making $1M revenue from the get go, 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.
Airy Liang, 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 Play Ventures
Play Ventures is the premier 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.
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