Animoca, Galaxy Interactive and Polygon back gaming firm nCore in web3 push

techcrunch.com:

nCore Games has raised $10 million in a new financing round as the top Indian gaming firm gears up to launch web3 offerings, its top executives said Monday.

Animoca Brands and Galaxy Interactive, two high-profile investors in the crypto space, led the funding. Polygon, a popular layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution, and Hyperedge Capital also participated in the round.

Scores of angel investors including Amitabh Singhal, Sandeep Nailwal, Kanwaljit Bombra, Sohil Chand, Ashish Chand, Ram Madhvani, Rakesh Kaul, Mannan Adenwala, Sanjay Narang, Taj Haslani, Kristian Segerstrale, Sanjay Gondal, Vedant Baali, Kartik Prabhakara, Peter Leung, Yashraj Akashi and Akshay Chaturvedi also invested in the round.

nCore Games houses a number of gaming studios including Studio nCore, Dot9 Games, and IceSpice. Its portfolio includes multiplayer action-title Fau-G and Pro Cricket Mobile that have garnered tens of millions of downloads. IceSpice, additionally, today houses a number of third-party games on its platform.

The startup plans to launch and invest in more games this year, said Vishal Gondal, co-founder of nCore Games, in an interview with TechCrunch.

But the bigger focus with the funding is expansion into the metaverse, he said. nCore Games is evaluating launching its own NFTs and tokens and may do so in the next few months, he said.

India has emerged as one of the largest mobile games markets globally by download counts. PUBG Mobile, before it was banned by New Delhi, had amassed over 50 million monthly active users in India. But gaming firms have struggled to efficiently monetize this user base because of low-penetration of in-app purchases and small ticket advertising dollars.

Gondal, an industry gaming veteran who sold his previous