Updated: WinZO announces $65 Mn in Series C round

Updated story: WinZO announced that it has raised $65 million in a Series C funding round led by California-based Griffin Gaming Partners, taking the total tally of capital raised by the Company to $90 million. 

Previous version: After edtech, gametech has become the new darling of investors with Dream11’s $400 million fundraise at a $5 billion valuation in May and Mobile Premier League or MPL’s $95 million Series D round in February. 

The buzz and the momentum continue with real money gaming platform WinZO Games now raising Rs 177.5 crore or $24 million in a fresh financing round led by new investor Griffin Gaming Partners and existing backer Makers Fund. This is the company’s second investment round in less than 10 months. 

WinZO Games has allotted 1,57,604 Series C Preference shares at an issue price of Rs 11,265.42 per share to raise the sum, regulatory filings show. Digital gaming-focused venture capital firm Griffin has invested Rs 147 crore whereas New York-based interactive entertainment VC firm Makers Fund has infused Rs 30.55 crore.

Today, the company announced that it has in fact raised a total amount of $65 million in its Series C round. However, for now, only $24 million is reflected in the regulatory filings accessed by Entrackr.

This is Griffin’s first investment in India. The venture capital firm focused on gaming, was launched in 2019 by Peter Levin, former president of interactive ventures, games, and digital strategy at Lionsgate; Phil Sanderson, a venture capitalist; and Nick Tuosto, managing director of investment banking firm LionTree.

WinZo last raised $18 million in its Series B round in September. Unlike MPL and Dream11 which focus on e-sports and fantasy sports respectively, WinZO Games hosts multiplayer games across categories such as casual, card, esports and Battle Royale from third-party developers and is available in 12 languages. 

With over 30 million registered users on its platform, the four-year-old company claims to clock over 1 billion micro-transactions every month.

Besides equity capital, WinZO Games has also raised $9.5 million in debt from Courtside, Makers Fund and The Stuart Partners to facilitate exit to its early backer Hike, the former messenger app. With a new focus, Hike now directly competes with WinZO and this was the reason for the Paavan Nanda-led company to offer exit to Hike.

Broadly, WinZO has no competition on a platform level as no one is evangelising a horizontal marketplace approach. Meanwhile, few of its verticals do compete with Rummycircle, RummyBaazi, Dream11 and MPL.

While WinZO Games’ revenue in FY21 is expected to grow at a quick pace as adoption and consumption of digital gaming has increased multifold in the past year, the company’s revenue had jumped 600% in FY20 to Rs 26.72 crore. Its losses for the year ending March 2020 stood at Rs 26.68 crore.

Update: The story has been updated with additional information after WinZo shared a press release with Entrackr.