Social gaming platform WinZO on Monday announced a new investment initiative, ‘Gaming Lab’, jointly with Kalaari Capital, to encourage and support India’s gaming ecosystem.
‘Gaming Lab’ will invest across all forms of interactive entertainment apps in India with a flexible corpus starting at over half a million dollars.
WinZO will also mentor gaming companies working towards transforming the gaming ecosystem by means of video streaming, game tech, innovations. The selected companies will receive support and drive effective monetisation, growth and also benefit from the tech expertise that WinZO has to offer.
‘Gaming Lab’ will be launched during GameCon 2021, a conference that will see participation from industry leaders in the gaming sector and discuss various facets associated with the future of India’s Gaming Ecosystem, trends in global and Indian gaming.
GameCon 2021 will also host India’s second community tournament by Axie Infinity, an NFT based online game. The conference will include panel discussions on emerging models in online gaming and the potential for the sector in India and workshops on how to get started with gaming as a career in India.
The speakers include Vani Kola (MD, Kalaari Capital), Jeffery Zirlin (Co-founder, Sky Mavis – Axie Infinity), Harri Manninen (Founder, Play Ventures), Paavan Nanda (Co-founder of WinZO Games, Zostel & ZO Rooms), Dheeraj Shah (Host, Desi Crypto Show), Michail Katkoff (CEO & Co-founder of Savage Game Studios) among others.
Saumya Singh Rathore, the co-founder of WinZO said, “We are looking to invest across all forms of interactive entertainment including but not limited to games and ancillary industries such as content creation, live-ops and security .”
“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. WinZO’s Center of Excellence will help drive growth, strategy and distribution for the selected applicant, while driving monetization in the world’s largest engagement powerhouse,” added Rathore.
Separately, the vernacular social interactive gaming platform had recently announced the third edition of its flagship Game Developer Fund with the largest ever corpus of $20 million.
The company is looking to invest across all forms of interactive entertainment: games, economies around gaming, content creation, live-ops, and security, it had said in an official release.
