WinZO, Kalaari Capital to launch 'Gaming Lab' with $500k investment

New Delhi, Nov 22: Domestic gaming and entertainment platform WinZO on Monday announced a new investment initiative with venture capital firm Kalaari Capital -- called 'Gaming Lab' -- to encourage and support the gaming ecosystem in India.

'Gaming Lab', set to be launched during the 'GameCon 2021' conference on November 26, would invest across all forms of interactive entertainment apps in India with a flexible corpus, starting at over half a million dollars.

According to WinZO, it has a user base of over 65 million premium quality users while 55 per cent of its user base prefers pay-to-play formats and spend over 60 minutes on the platform daily.

"We are placed in a strategically sound position owing to our understanding of tech, the real pulse of India that is at the centre of online gaming evolution that we as a nation are witnessing. These capabilities combined, we will be able to sufficiently provide requisite support in the form of capital, guidance and strategic help to further this socio-economically critical ecosystem," Saumya Singh Rathore, the co-founder of WinZO said in a statement.

Association with WinZO, which hosts 80 plus games in 12 plus languages and has 80per cent users consuming the app in vernacular languages, will further help Gaming studios and companies.

WinZO recently announced a $20 million game developer fund III, saying that it will mentor gaming companies towards revolutionising the gaming ecosystem by means of video streaming, game tech and innovations.

The $200 billion plus global gaming market is ready for disruption from India.

The 'GameCon 2021' conference will be a platform where industry leaders will discuss how various technologies such as Blockchain, AR/VR, NFTs (non-fungible tokens) can create new monetisation models like play to win rewards, said WinZO.