Bitkraft Ventures sharpens focus on India gaming market; appoints Anuj Tandon as partner

US-based venture investor Bitkraft Ventures, which backs gaming studios, platforms and gaming-related technologies, is doubling down on the Indian market. The investment firm has appointed Anuj Tandon, former CEO of gaming at JetSynthesis, as its partner in India.

Bitkraft Ventures launched its third fund in April with a $275 million corpus to invest in early-stage companies. Speaking to ET, Tandon, who has earlier led investments for South Korean gaming major Krafton in India, said that the structure for Bitkraft’s investments in India is yet to be finalised and that the firm will develop a thesis for its dedicated efforts in the country over the coming months.

“We have the main Bitkraft Ventures Fund-III…there is the $100 million opportunities fund, which looks at investing in Series B stage. We’ll be looking at all kinds of deals across the early stages of gaming and interactive media. This brings an increased emerging markets’ focus for Bitkraft, and increased deal activity, especially in India, which is an exciting market,” Tandon said.

“Gaming and interactive media are at the right stage, where there are macro tailwinds in the market, there’s availability of liquidity…there are a lot of second-time founders. The flywheel of exits and capital allocation has started to move. It makes sense now to focus on the early stage, where you’d see quality entrepreneurs building in interactive media and gaming,” he added.

To be sure, Bitkraft has already backed startups such as investment education and trading simulation platform StockGro, mobile games development startup Lila Games and smartphone gaming platform GameZop.

According to an October report by PwC, India’s online gaming market is one of the fastest growing in the world, and is projected to grow at 14.5% between 2023 and 2028, nearly double the global growth.

In August 2023, Krafton Inc announced plans to invest $150 million in Indian startups over the next two to three years.In April this year, ET reported that gaming and interactive media venture capital firm Lumikai is aiming to close 10-12 investments in early-stage startups over the next few years from its $50-million India Fund-II.

“We have made several investments in India already, but our ambition is to increase our activity and capital deployment in the country visibly going forward. This is where Anuj’s experience and network in the Indian games and entertainment industry is crucial to us and our ability to identify and partner with the most outstanding entrepreneurs in India,” said Bitkraft’s founding general partner, Jens Hilgers.

“It is more than just having a person on the ground; it is the deep understanding of the market, the actors, the local preferences and dynamics from people to design and product to financing,” Hilgers added.