In the coming decades, Africa will be a significant growth market for mobile gaming driven by the proliferation of technology adoption among the continent’s young population. and how gamers in sub-Saharan Africa will increase to more than 180 million in the next five years, by a report, yesstart-ups like South Africa carry 1st they are strategically positioning themselves for this phase of successive growth in the industry.
Since its launch in 2018, Carry1st, a publisher of social games and interactive content in Africa, has raised funds from investors like Google through the Africa Investment Fund and Avenir Growth Capital. But most impressive is its backing from top-tier web3 and gaming-focused funds: Andressen Horowitz (a16z), Konvoy Ventures and now Bitkraft Ventures, the lead investor in its recently announced $27 million pre-Series B round. Both a16z and Konvoy participated in this funding round, including TTV Capital, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital and Kepple Ventures.
“Now we have in mind the three best funds that focus on games and web3. And so it only adds even more resources, perspective and assistance to help us reach our goals,” CEO Robbin–Coker twine he told TechCrunch in an interview.
Last January, Carry1st announced a $20 million Series A extension round, which followed the $6 million it raised in May 2021 from various investors, including Riot Games, the developer and publisher behind the biggest PC game. played globally. League of Legends. Sometime last year, Carry1st and Riot Games strengthened that investment by signing a partnership in which the South African team agreed to pilot local payments for the American game developer starting in 2023. In other words, Carry1st will act as payments partner. of Riot in Africa.
Robbin-Coker, on the call, said the partnership leverages Pay1st, the gaming startup’s monetization platform-as-a-service used for games from the company and from third-party publishers.
Back in 2018, when Carry1st launched, it was a game studio that conceptualized, developed, and released mobile games (starting with Carry1st Trivia). While the company still makes its games or has recently begun acquiring games to enhance, relaunch, and publish at scale (mine rescue Y Gebeta), Carry1st also grants exclusive licenses to third-party games. Pay1st is the integrated funding platform that helps the startup earn revenue from both categories: first-party games and third-party games, of which Riot Games is one of its clients.
“The Asociation [with Riot Games] is our big initiative this year because we built all this great technology around payments and digital commerce, and we leverage it just for our games,” said the CEO, who founded Carry1st with lucy hoffman Y We believe in Mundanggepfufa. “But we thought we could also take the opportunity to partner with some amazing big game companies that may not be ready to fully license their games to us yet, but would like to make more money in the region and understand how profitable Africa can be. for them.”
Meanwhile, the CEO mentioned on the call that the four-year-old gaming startup has other partnerships, including a “great gaming licensing deal that we’re excited about.” In addition to the collaboration with Riot Games, Carry1st is also building on the momentum of a successful partnership with Call of Duty®: Mobile in South Africa that happened in the last quarter of 2022, where Carry1st, acting as a local partner, mentored and led the video game franchise on ways to achieve scale in South Africa during a three-month pilot.
“That [South Africa] It’s a promising market for them, and they were keen to have a local partner help them navigate and help run a pilot program for three months last year. We hope that will lead to, you know, even deeper engagement and even bigger and better prospects for that franchise, not just in South Africa but potentially across the continent,” he added.
South African music artist Nasty C (far left); Carry1st co-founder and COO Lucy Hoffman (far right).
The pre-Series B funding will see Carry1st drive growth in all of these areas: developing, licensing and publishing new games, as well as expanding Pay1st. According to the company’s statement, the funding round follows a successful year in which the first game from its CrazyHubs game accelerator, the Carry1st accelerator launched in partnership with CrazyLabs, one of its six partner studios, became the No. 1 downloaded game in the US for a few days last July, according to data.ai. The game, Presidentis loosely based on a fictional Donald Trump and was Developed by Nairobi-based Mekan Games.
games like President have seen Carry 1st revenue grow 10 times over the year. Other areas where the gaming startup has also seen growth include Carry1st Shop, its online marketplace for virtual goods, which the company says allows customers across Africa to pay for content and more than 100 products through 120 different payment methods. including bank transfers, cryptocurrencies and mobile money.
“What we found, particularly in countries like Nigeria, South Africa and Morocco, was that there was a massive appetite for digital content, especially with the ability to pay for it with local payment methods and, more importantly, local currency. which is unique or unusual because most online purchases are denominated in dollars,” said the CEO. He claimed Carry1st was the gaming startup’s fastest-growing product last year, as users and revenue grew fivefold.
In the TechCrunch interview last January, Robbin-Coker mentioned that South Africa-based Carry1st was exploring the possibility of developing infrastructure to support play-to-earn gaming in Africa. It’s a plan still in the works: According to the CEO, Carry1st is developing a beta platform dubbed Play1st, where gamers interested in web3 gaming can discover games, review them within communities, and showcase achievements and rewards, however with less enthusiasm given how the appetite for web3 games has cooled in the last year.
Speaking about the investment, Jens Hilgers, Founding General Partner of BITKRAFT Ventures, said: “Africa is home to the world’s largest youth population, and this next generation will grow up digitally native with gaming as their primary entertainment preference. We fully believe in Carry1st’s impressive founding team and their vision to build critical infrastructure and localized content, ensuring gaming and interactive entertainment in Africa thrives.”
