Africa - Carry1st Raises $6 Million to Enter Gaming Market
Carry1st Raises $6 Million to Enter Africa's Gaming Market
Carry1st, a publisher of mobile games focused on Africa, has raised $6 million in funding to enter the continent's billion-dollar gaming market.
Carry1st offers a comprehensive publishing solution for its partners, including distribution, localization, user acquisition, marketing, customer experience, and monetization.
Konvoy Ventures led the round, and a Colorado-based venture capital firm focused on video games. Jackson Vaughan, managing partner of Konvoy Ventures, will join the company's board of directors as part of the agreement.
Riot Games (developer of League of Legends), Raine Ventures, Tokyo-based AET Fund/Akatsuki (creators of Dragon Ball Z), and fintech specialist TTV Capital also participated in the round.
The latest funding round will be utilized to secure new partnerships with global gaming studios, launch and scale the company's existing portfolio of games, and expand the product, engineering, and growth teams.
Matching the Gaming Demand in Africa
Carry1st, co-founded in 2018 by Sierra Leonean Cordel Robbin-Coker, American Lucy Parry, and Zimbabwean software engineer Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu, aims to match Africa's rapidly growing youth population's gaming demands.
Already with offices in New York, Lagos, and South Africa, the startup has launched two games as direct downloads from its website, Hyper! as well as Carry1st Trivia.
After about a year in the market, the company realized the critical nature of having local payment solutions, as users lack credit cards accepted by Google Play and Apple's App Store.
“No one was taking an ambitious approach to content, so we chose to start with gaming and attempt to build a truly unique mobile internet company for the region,” Hoffman explained in an interview.
The company raised a $2.5 million seed round in early 2020 and developed a payments platform called 'Pay1st' that enables users to make payments using local payment methods.
The platform is now available in six African countries, offering an integrated fintech solution that combines popular payment methods.
Additionally, Robbin-Coker revealed that the company was on the verge of signing seven titles for 2020. Cosi Games of New York, Qene Games of Ethiopia, and Raketspel of Sweden, which has over 120 million downloads across all of its games, are among those that have signed up.
Impact on Africa’s Gaming
Boluwatife Omotayo, an industry expert, explained that increased cash flow would create more jobs and bring more global mobile entertainment content to Africans.
He added that it would increase local adoption and monetization, enhance the e-Sport ecosystem, and signify to international players that the continent has a market.
Carry1st, according to Vaughan, is resolving distribution issues through its payment infrastructure and approaching sub-regions contextually.
Similarly, Brendan Mulligan, Riot Games' head of corporate development, acknowledged that the African gaming market is exploding and that Carry1st will introduce games to a passionate and influential audience.
Despite the growth, the African market faces significant monetization challenges. In Nigeria, for example, the mobile gaming market is estimated to be worth approximately $126 million, compared to the $140 billion global video game industry.
Hoffman, however, stated that the company is addressing this through its regional fintech focus.
In Conclusion
Africa is the fastest-growing region for mobile game downloads, with approximately 1.1 billion Millennials and Generation Zs. Despite this potential, international studios frequently struggle to serve African gamers profitably due to unresolved distribution and digital payment ecosystems.
Carry1st's new payment system and business model aim to assist its partners in entering the African market.
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