Mobile social gaming startup PlaySimple gets funding from IDG Ventures, others

Bangalore-based mobile social gaming startup PlaySimple Games has secured an undisclosed sum in funding from IDG Ventures. The round also saw participation from Yezdi Lashkari, an angel investor and former general manager at Zynga.

IDG invested in PlaySimple via its recently-launched seed funding programme. As part of the deal, Karthik Prabhakar from IDG has joined the board of the startup.

The capital raised will be used to build a portfolio of mobile casual games targeting the global markets.

"Our vision is to build a world-class mobile entertainment company out of India. We believe that there is a huge opportunity out there, and now is a great time to go after it. With IDG as our partner, we're driving towards some exciting game releases over the coming months," said Siddharth Jain, co-founder of PlaySimple.

The startup was founded in July this year by former Zynga employees Jain, Preeti Reddy and Suraj Nalin. At Zynga, they built & run popular titles such as Mafia Wars, Farmville, Bubble Safari, Vampire Wars and Yoville.

PlaySimple aims to create engaging mobile games. It has already released a title called GuessUp, and is targeting to release multiple games in the market over the next few months.

"Globally, mobile gaming is a very large, growing market. Gaming is a hits business, but the ones that succeed do take off rapidly towards profitable growth in a short period of time," said Prabhakar.

"IDG has built a successful portfolio of gaming investments in the US in companies such as Funzio. The team at PlaySimple is young and highly experienced in building/scaling mobile games for the global markets and this investment is part of the IDGVI Seed Programme," he added.

In November, another Bangalore-based social gaming startup HashCube Technologies Pvt Ltd had raised Rs 4.2 crore (about $700,000) from Mumbai-based gaming company Nazara Technologies.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)