Business
underDOGS raises undisclosed amount from Intelli Reboot Digital
The Mumbai-based game development company, underdogs, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from digital platforms firm, Intelli Reboot Digital Pvt. Ltd. The deal also includes the digital platform acquiring a significant stake in underDOGS and strengthens its team to develop games together.
Vaibhav Chavan, the founder of underdogs, said, “underDOGS bring to Reboot a strong team that understands the complexities of delivering world class commercially successful products.”
“We are dealing with Samsung to bring all the games from the studio to the Tizen Platform. We are also publishing all our created games on Baidu’s store – MoboJoy. We have also ventured with Worldoo for a year for creating original content which is going to be published not only on Worldoo platform but also on Android and iOS platforms,” added Chavan.
Disney’s market for mobile gaming sector is fresh and fluid starting with one movie game this year. underDOGS is going to generate IP based games catering to consumers as well as corporate.
In the past 5 years, underDOGS Gaming has developed leading gaming titles such as Skatelander, Parking Evolution 3D, Smash Rider etc. It has also been a backend to Zapak, Games2win, Hungama, Disney Indiagames, Idealabs, Zee TV, and 9XM with products such as Jodha Akbar, Silly Chicken, and BCL etc.
Sameer Mahuli, founder of Intelli Reboot Digital Pvt. Ltd. Said, “Through this acquisition, Reboot will strengthen its already-robust digital portfolio, to become a prominent player in the gaming space focused on building gaming experiences for the global market, including corporate & celebrity games and enabling games to monetize effectively.”
Launched in 2011 by Vaibhav Chavan, Sankesh More, Amit Aware and Abhishek Wankhede, underdogs got incubated at the Zone Startup India accelerator by Ryerson Futures at Bombay Stock Exchange, Mumbai in March 2014. Later, in June that year, the team released the first in-house game Parking Evolution 3D as a self-published game on Google Play store.
The game has been downloaded over more than 700,000 times globally. Recently, in July 2016, it reached a milestone of making 100 games in total which include self-published as well as client/brand games
The gaming industry has seen growth in leaps and boundaries and more channels are coming with their own gaming sectors. According to a recent NASSCOM IGDA study, revenue from casual gaming in India will quadruple by 2016 to over $250 million. Last year, about 25 prominent games were released across platforms. The Indian gaming industry is close to $890 Mn and there is about 100 odd game developing firms in the country.
Other prominent players in this space include 19Studios, Zebu Games, 99 Games, Rolocule, CreatioSoft, Games2Win and more.
