Online gaming site Games24x7 rebranded as RummyCircle; Co discloses investment from Tiger Global

Online gaming firm Play Games24x7 Pvt Ltd disclosed that it has raised funding from Tiger Global Management, a global hedge fund manager which has been a prolific investor in early stage digital startups in India. Play Games24x7 has also rebranded its online rummy site Games24x7.com as RummyCircle.com.

Over the next year, the startup plans to enter other online gaming markets. The firm did not say exactly when did Tiger Global invest in the firm or share the quantum of funding.

The firm was co-founded by Trivikraman Thampy(CEO) and Bhavin Pandya (COO). Thampy an IIT Bombay grad has a PhD in Economics from New York University. Pandya too completed his PhD in Economics at New York University and prior to that studied electrical engineering with interests in biomedical engineering at Purdue University.

The duo first formed a US-based firm Games 24x7 Inc besides the Indian firm. It is not clear if the funding has gone into the US firm or the Indian entity.

"Most of us grew up playing rummy with our families. But once we hit 1 million registered users, it was clear that we needed to give rummy its own stage in India," said Bhavin Pandya, founder and COO of Play Games24x7.

Play Games24x7 is investing in proprietary technology and business intelligence systems. Binand Sethumadhavan, head of business intelligence at Play Games24x7 said: "We track an enormous amount of data to determine what players enjoy and what they don't. Standard tools of the trade like A/B testing and statistical analysis are rigorously applied."

"The online gamer wants speed, and when he is playing for money he wants this speed reliably. This is not an easy task in India where even today there are severe last mile Internet issues. To give our players the smoothest experience, we spend the bulk of our time on core infrastructure components and ensuring that as the business scales, the user experience continues to be just what the business team wants," according to Phaneendra Divi, the head of technology at Play Games24x7.

Gaming as a sector has been seeing a lot of traction from investors lately. Some recent investments include Blume Ventures and Mumbai Angels investing in Pune-based Gaming startupRolocule Games; IAN and Blume investing in social gaming startup HashCube and IAN putting money in Mumbai-based digital gaming startup Gamiana. It is also interesting to note the overlapping of investors in these companies.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)