Exclusive: Krafton Inc picks up 19.94% stake in Bobble.ai

Krafton Inc has picked up Rs 206 crore worth of primary and secondary shares in indigenous social keyboard company Bobble.ai. This is the maiden funding round for the Delhi-based company in 2022.

The board at Bobble.ai has passed a special resolution to issue 2,375 preference shares at an issue price of Rs 3,07,029 per share to raise Rs 72.9 crore or $9.2 million from Krafton Inc, regulatory filing filed with the RoC shows.

Importantly, Krafton has also bought 4,339 Series C CCPS from Affle for Rs 133 crore which constitutes a 12.39% stake in Bobble, as per Affle’s disclosure with National Stock Exchange (NSE).

With a mix of a primary and secondary deal, Krafton commands a 19.94% stake in Bobble. According to the filings, the primary funds will be used for business expansion, vendor payments, and employee incentives. 

Bobble.ai offers Indic keyboards which let users type in Indian languages, supporting over 120 languages and dialects such as Bangla, Marathi, Malayalam, Hindi, Tamil, and Punjabi among others. It also has a facial recognition feature which is used to convert selfies into GIFs and stickers. Bobble’s app integrates with Facebook, Snapchat, and Whatsapp and works in real time. 

Queries sent to Bobble about the secondary transaction did not elicit any immediate response. We will update the story as and when they respond.

While Bobble is yet to file its financial statements for FY22, the seven-year-old company’s operating revenue grew 2.1X to Rs 2.31 crore in FY21. Its losses also expanded 45% to Rs 12.3 crore during the fiscal year ending March 2021, as per its annual financial statement with the RoC.

Over the past year, Krafton has been bullish on the content, gaming and media segments in India and made several bets including Nautilus Mobile, Pratilipi, Nodwin, Pocket FM, Kuku FM, dating app Frnd and game streaming platform Loco. The South Korean firm claims that it already invested $100 million in the Indian market.