PlayVerse Raises $1.5 Million In Seed Funding Round Led By Akatsuki Inc PlayVerse looks to maximize the monetization potential of popular Japanese IPs and brands in India
By Saptak Bardhan •
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PlayVerse announced on Tuesday to have raised $ 1.5 million seed funding led by Japanese gaming company Akatsuki Inc. By offering world-class content, toys, games and technology products in India, the diverse platform will be focusing on its mission of providing an enriching experience to the end consumers of the country. With an aim to increase cross-border collaborations between India and Japan, PlayVerse looks to maximize the monetization potential of popular Japanese IPs and brands in India.
"Thanks to the advent of blockchain technology and the scalability offered by promising L2 protocols, we have some moonshot ideas of IP monetization that we are exploring. At the moment, we are focused on customer discovery and hypothesis testing to assess product-market fit," said Jaineel Aga, founder, PlayVerse.
A FICCI-EY report estimated that by 2025, 50 per cent of the total time spent on OTT platforms will be to consume regional content. PlayVerse will also be aiming at localizing global content into regional Indian languages to be inclusive and accessible to the diverse vernacular Indian audience. The Indian toys market reached a value of $1.35 billion in 2021 and with more than 400 million online gamers in India, the Indian gaming industry is expected to reach $3.9 billion by 2025, according to a statement given by the company.
Founded by serial entrepreneur Jaineel Aga, PlayVerse is planning to launch its own D2C brand which will be focused on an interconnected universe of content and play. It aims to unlock the full potential of an IP with a 360-degree approach to content and merchandise. This merchandise would include both physical products such as toys as well as digital assets like avatars, emojis, and skins creating more interest among users. PlayVerse will be actively focusing on enabling content owners to maximize the monetization potential of their IPs. PlayVerse looks to build on its philosophy of joy infinitum meaning, spreading infinite joy to its consumers.
