Gaming and interactive media fund Lumikai on Thursday announced the launch of its second fund targeting a $50 million corpus from global investors to invest in pre-seed to series A rounds into India’s gaming and interactive media companies. Interactive media is generally referred to as digital content for users to engage dynamically and interactively through different forms of media including text, audio, video, images, and animation for an immersive experience. Virtual reality, apps, social media are different forms of interactive media while TV, radio etc., are non-interactive.
Lumikai’s first fund had $40 million under management and for the second fund, the company is inviting domestic Rupee capital investors for the first time apart from the global corpus with the setup of a dedicated $10 million alternative investment fund for Indian limited partners. The new fund will bring Lumikai’s total investment into India’s gaming and interactive media sector to over $100 million. Lumikai said the fund has already completed its oversubscribed first close.
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The second fund’s investors included publicly listed Japan-based gaming giants Mixi and Colopl, South Korean multi-billion-dollar conglomerates Krafton and Smilegate, Finland-based decacorn Supercell, Indian strategics including Nazara and select large Indian family offices including the Jeejeebhoys, KCT Group, DSP Kothari, and Sattva Group.
Moreover, high net worth individuals including Ben Feder (former CEO of Take Two Interactive), Jon Vlassopulos (CEO, Napster), Pankaj Gupta (founder, Gulf Islamic Investments) and Akshat Rathee (Founder, Nodwin Gaming) also participated in the fundraise.
Fund II will continue to invest in the $2.6 billion gaming market across five key areas; first, gaming content, original IP and digital media; second, UGC platforms and creator economy; third, tools, technology and infrastructure; fourth companies leveraging “systems of play”, applied game mechanics and interactive touchpoints across value chains; and fifth frontier bets including mixed reality, generative AI, virtual identities, edge computing etc.
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The fund said it already has a “healthy pipeline of investments planned for deployment”. There are three deals at the term sheet stage for companies built by industry veterans in plays within the content, platforms and frontier thesis areas, it added.
“Over the course of the last 3 years, we have seen over 1,400 deals and seen the industry attract investor interest, deepen founder quality and achieve liquidity events. We continue to remain bullish on the long-term potential of the India interactive market and this is our opportunity to build on the foundation we have laid,” said Salone Sehgal, Founding GP of Lumikai in a statement.