Kratos Studios raises $20M and acquires IndiGG

Kratos Studios announced it has raised $20 million at a valuation of $150 million, and it has acquired IndiGG.

The seed round was led by Accel, with participation from Prosus Ventures, Courtside Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Nazara and others.

Game veterans Manish Agarwal and Ishank Gupta started the Bengaluru, India-based Kratos. They are building a Web3 gaming decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) under the IndiGG brand which they have also acquired through a token swap. The funding will enable them to build distribution rails in emerging markets for global Web3 games.

Additionally, the DAO will also invest in identifying, building and developing the most promising Web3 games across the world. Argarwal and Gupta will work closely with Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal and Yield Guild Games (YGG) co-founder Gabby Dizon toward the mission of building the largest gaming DAO in the world.

Nazara Technologies, where Agarwal was formerly the CEO, has also invested in this round with an intent to collaborate with IndiGG on the Web3 front.

In a statement, Agarwal said “We are providing the 500 million gamers of India an opportunity to leverage their time and skill to become creators of digital goods on the blockchain for global games. This can enable India to transform into the digital goods’ factory for the world.”

And Gupta said in a statement, “The IndiGG stack will partner with existing gaming micro-communities,
both on-ground and online, as sub-DAOs in the IndiGG ecosystem. The South Asia region has witnessed a massive growth because of the young gaming population.”

“South Asia has a thriving gaming community. YGG is backing IndiGG to build a gamer’s nation and plug Indian gamers into the global world of Web3 Gaming.” said Gabby Dizon, cofounder of YGG, in a statement.

Nailwal, cofounder of Polygon, added in a statement, “At Polygon, our dream of bringing a billion users on chain can get a huge boost through IndiGG. Under the leadership of Manish and Ishank, IndiGG will become the foremost partner for chains and games building in Web3.”

Following the acquisition, existing INDI token holders will be swapped to new tokens at the time of the token generation event for the new token. Until such time, the INDI token will continue to trade on existing exchanges.

Agarwal joined India’s nascent gaming ecosystem 15 years ago post successful stints with Hindustan Unilever and Microsoft among others. As the CEO of Nazara, he was the driving force in making it India’s first and only publicly listed gaming company. Manish was also the co-chair of IAMAI Gaming Council and the Convenor of the FICCI Gaming Committee.

Gupta has operated and advised consumer firms in China, the UK, South Africa, and India. During his stints with marquee global companies like AB InBev and BCG he has built and led cross-functional and diverse teams. He actively invests in early-stage ventures focussed on consumer and blockchain.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz