WinZO partners with Kalaari Capital to launch Gaming Lab; to co-invest in gaming

Social gaming platform WinZO on Monday said it has partnered with Kalaari Capital to launch an investment initiative Gaming Lab to encourage and support the gaming ecosystem in the country.

The Gaming Lab will be launched during GameCon 2021. The lab will invest across all forms of interactive entertainment apps in India with a flexible corpus, starting with over half a million dollars, a statement said. Association with WinZO will further help gaming studios and companies to be culturally relevant for Bharat, it added. WinZO will also mentor these gaming companies working towards revolutionising the gaming ecosystem through video streaming, game tech and innovations, the statement said.

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The selected companies will receive support and drive effective monetisation, growth and also benefit from the tech expertise that WinZO has to offer, it added. 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, security etc. 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,” WinZO co-founder Saumya Singh Rathore said.

Rathore further said these capabilities combined, the organisations 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 Centre of Excellence will help drive growth, strategy and distribution for the selected applicant while driving monetisation in the world’s largest engagement powerhouse, she said.

Towards its efforts of strengthening gaming development, WinZO had recently announced a USD 20 million game developer fund III with the idea to holistically boosting the global game development ecosystem, including game design, economies around gaming, content creation, live-ops, and security through capital investment, infrastructural support and monetisation support.