Flipkart takes over gaming startup Mech Mocha-Here's why

Walmart-backed Flipkart has acquired gaming startup Mech Mocha, signaling that the e-commerce company is keen on improving its presence in the competitive but lucrative gaming segment. Mech Mocha runs India's first live-social gaming platform 'Hello Play'

Flipkart has acquired the 'Intellectual Property' from Mech Mocha, whose gaming team will join Flipkart. Through this acquisition, the Walmart-owned company hopes to focus on developing new and innovative formats to engage with users on its platform.

India's overall gaming industry size is estimated to be around Rs 6,200 crore with over 85 percent on logging into games from their mobile devices.

In December 2015, Flipkart had made investments in the Bangalore-based gaming studio Mech Mocha, which is also the official gaming licensee for Chhota Bheem.

Why is Flipkart onboarding Mech Mocha?

Mech Mocha is in seven Indian local languages and has over 10+ games including popular Indian multiplayer games such as Ludo, Carrom, Snakes & Ladder and Cricket.

Co-founded by Arpita Kapoor and Mohit Rangaraju, Mech Mocha has been backed by investors like Accel Partners, Blume Ventures and Shunwei Capital.

Arpita Kapoor, Co-Founder & CEO, Mech Mocha, said, “With Vocal for Local being the focus for digital apps across the nation, this strategic backing of Flipkart provides us an opportunity to be part of a larger ecosystem that helps us create unique social gaming experiences for Indian users."

She added: "We look forward to being a part of the Flipkart ecosystem and leveraging the Flipkart Cloud Platform, Super Coins, Reward store and Flipkart Ads platform to strengthen the platform for our users.”

Prakash Sikaria, Vice-President, Flipkart, said, “We see many first-time e-commerce users come online through formats such as video and games, as they build familiarity with the medium. Our observations of Flipkart GameZone, reflect this trend as we see a strong correlation between casual gamers becoming early shoppers on Flipkart for their digital journey."

Through this transaction, we will strengthen our capabilities in the gaming domain with access to Mech Mocha's IP, games and talented team that will help us accelerate our efforts in this space, he added.

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