Flipkart acquires gaming platform Mech Mocha’s IP and team

E-commerce major Flipkart has announced the acquisition of intellectual property from Mech Mocha, a mobile gaming startup that runs live-social gaming platform 'Hello Play'. 

As a part of the acquisition, Mech Mocha’s gaming team will join Flipkart. Co-founded by Arpita Kapoor and Mohit Rangaraju, the Bengaluru-based startup’s team will focus on scaling Flipkart’s gaming efforts under the leadership of Prakash Sikaria, Vice-President at Flipkart.

“We look forward to being a part of the Flipkart ecosystem and leveraging the Flipkart Cloud Platform, Super Coins, Reward store and Flipkart Ads platform to strengthen the platform for our users,” said Kapoor, co-founder and CEO, Mech Mocha in a press release.

Available in seven Indian local languages, Mech Mocha develops and publishes freemium games including popular multiplayer games such as Ludo, Carrom, Snakes & Ladder and Cricket. The gaming platform targets users that are coming online for the first time from tier II and tier III cities. The app also allows users to interact with each other through its in-game video and voice chat feature.

Through this move, Flipkart will target first-time e-commerce users and casual gamers who come online through online gaming platforms. Mech Mocha’s IP and team acquisitions by Flipkart have come at a time when consumption of casual gaming has shot up since March due to pandemic.

Flipkart, along with Blume Ventures, had backed Mech Mocha during its $1 million seed round in 2015. Till date, the six-year-old startup has raised $5 million in Series A round from the likes of Accel Partners and Shunwei Capital and was in talks to raise around $10 million in Series B round.

While Flipkart has been positioning the deal as acquisition, it appears like acquihire.

Mech Moch will be the first acquisition for Flipkart in the gaming segment. In the past, it had acquired several companies including Letsbuy, Myntra and PhonePe. Over the years, the Walmart-controlled company had bought stakes in startups such as Blackbuck, Shadowfax and Qikpod in logistics, EasyRewardz in loyalty and rewards.

Flipkart also invested in the agritech sector via Ninjacart. Fashion retailer Aditya Birla, speech recognition platform Live.ai in and Upstream Commerce in analytics are its other bets.