Game streaming platform Loco on Thursday said it has raised $42 million (about Rs 330 crore) in a Series-A funding round led by crypto firm Hashed, with participation from Makers Fund, Catamaran Ventures and Korea Investment Partners.
All the investors from the company's Seed round, including Krafton, Lumikai and Hiro Capital, also participated in this round.
''We raised $9 million in Seed round last year and this is the $42 million round. Hashed is an existing investor. It participated in the Seed round as well,'' Loco Co-Founder Ashwin Suresh said.
He added that the fund will be utilised for improving game, streaming experience, building Web3 technology capability and improvising online gaming tournaments in India. Loco has built a direct API integration with Krafton, enabling the two companies to re-imagine play and watch journeys for fans, it said in a press statement.
The company is also in the process of building in-game integrations with other international partners. In addition to these partnerships, Loco has teamed up with global giants like the NBA, Logitech and Red Bull to run India-focused e-sports programmes, the company said in a statement.
Loco has not started monetising plaform yet
Suresh said Loco has not started monetising the platform as it is just focussing on building user base and engagement.
''We will keep scaling DAU (daily active users), MAU (monthly active users), time spend on platform, amount of streamers, etc. We have not defined the threshold level when we will start monetising but we will get a sense when to monetise when we build the matrix right,'' he said.
Loco Co-Founder Anirudh Pandita said the company expects to get 100 million monthly active users in another three years by ramping up the platform. ''We will look at growing our user base by five to 10 times. Given the market size in India, our platform can grow to 100 million monthly users in the next three years. There are other geographies that are looking for us to come there,'' Pandita said.
(With PTI inputs)
