Why the $830M gaming fund Bitkraft is bullish on Asia

techcrunch.com:

With $830 million in assets under management, Bitkraft Ventures has built a name for backing early- to mid-stage web3 games and other immersive technologies. After eight years of investing mostly in the West, the firm is extending its footprint to Asia to capture the continent’s savvy mobile gamers and fledgling web3 gaming space.

Bitkraft, which has a portfolio of over 100 startups, announced today that it is expanding to Asia by bringing on two new members: Jin Oh, formerly president of Riot Games and CEO of Garena, will take the helm as partner; Johnathan Huang, former director at Temasek, will serve as principal.

Currently, Bitkraft invests 15% outside of the Western market, with the majority in Asia. Over time, the firm aims to develop a dedicated strategy for the continent with the goal of increasing investments in Asia to 20-25%.

Despite being a small team of two in the region, the fact that Bitkraft has boots on the ground in Asia gives it a big advantage over many other Western gaming funds, Huang, who’s based in Singapore, told TechCrunch in an interview.

The team also benefits from the investors’ complementary experiences in the gaming industry. Oh “really knows the space very well as an operator… He’s very well connected and knows the ins and outs of building a game and a platform and all the adjacencies with gaming,” said Huang.

“My background is very investor focused,” added the investor, who has been a lifelong gamer himself. “I came through two years of banking and did investments for the last seven years… Having that operator-plus-investor combo is something that’s very, very powerful that we don’t see in many of the funds.”

Oh and Huang will hunt down conventional gaming projects in Asia but will also