Are you a mobile game developer? Nazara’s dedicated $1.6M Game Fund is ready to help you out

Indians love to play casual mobile games. A decent amount of time is spent browsing hundreds of casual, and sports centric games at the app stores. Most games are published by a reputed publisher and game development company but rarely a game by a single developer or a small team appears at the top of the gaming charts.

With the evolution of the smartphone platform, a small team of game developers (or even a solo programmer) can now build a mobile game, but challenges abound. Indian mobile game developers find it difficult to stay on the charts. Many run short of funds to publish and market their games in the fiercely competitive games category of the mobile app stores.

The shortage of funds is a common challenge for the majority of startups. Not many mobile game developers manage to raise funds since the venture capital firms are not confident of or have very limited knowledge of the mobile gaming space in India. To address that, Nazara Technologies has pioneered a dedicated game gund of about INR 100 million (US$1.6 million) to invest in the startups focused on mobile games development.

Nitish Mittersain, CEO of Nazara Technologies, tells Tech in Asia: “The Game Fund is dedicated for the mobile game developers who have a vision to create quality games and establish a sustainable business.” Bangalore-based cross-platform social gaming startup HashCube secured INR 42 million (US$677,000) in a funding round led by Nazara with Perry LaForge, Ah Ventures, Blume Ventures, and investors from Indian Angel Network.

Addressing early stage woes

Nazara Technologies was started in 2003 as a company offering game development, publishing, distribution, and consultation services. With over a decade of experience in the industry, Mittersain aspires to guide the new age mobile game development startups with its local knowledge, best practices, and distribution expertise.

Imagine a couple of mobile developers and gaming enthusiasts team up to work on a mobile game. Driven by their creative prowess and engineering excellence, such a team can easily bootstrap a startup after quitting their full-time jobs. But after six months of development process, the cash crunch adds to the pressure.

That’s where Game Fund comes to the rescue with an early stage fund ranging from INR 2.5 million (US $40,000) to INR 20 million (US $320,000) to keep the development process running and come out with a quality game.

“A lot of startups are more passionate about their product and often miss out working on other aspects of the business. Today, statutory compliance is very important for any startup in order to avoid any unwanted troubles in future,” says Mittersain. Many passionate startups are unaware of the importance of maintaining accounts and corporate governance which leads to issues at a later stage.

Along with early stage funding, his company is also ready to mentor these startups in every way, right from product development to after sales assessment.

Discoverability of the game is one of the biggest challenges that mobile game developers face in the official and third-party mobile app stores. Nazara with its publishing and distribution experience will the help the startups to market their games and also understand the importance of traffic metrics to support the game with meaningful content updates.

Ground rules

While the Game Fund is open to anyone, a startup team with relevant background experience needs to have an alpha build or a prototype ready, along with a clear business model. Besides that, the passion, concept clarity, and future vision mobile game development also helps to speed up the process. India-based startups get a preference since it makes it easy for Nazara to work with them directly, though the fund is open to teams from other countries as well.

“With a set funding range, we want to invest in as many startups as possible. The investment figures will vary for the startups in early stage compared to those who need capital for expansion and product development. A number of Venture Capital firms have approached to tie-up with the game fund and wish to invest in the selected startups to nurture the growth of mobile gaming ecosystem in India,” says Mittersain.

Nazara Game Fund is targeting the startups aiming for high quality games instead of getting influenced by one-hit wonders. While Angry Birds and Flappy Bird are immensely popular casual games, its developers are still cashing in on that while working on new games.