CloudFeather Games, a Bengaluru-based provider of next-generation plug-&-play real-money gaming (RMG) and Web 3.0 tools for game developers, has raised $1.25 million from Lumikai.

Venture Highway and strategic angel investors such as Maninder Gulati, global chief strategy officer, OYO, and Manish Agrawal, CEO, Nazara Technologies, also participated in the funding.

CloudFeather Games has been building its Software Development Kit (SDK) in stealth since January 2022 and has started trials with external developers. The company will use the funding to hire key personnel in business development, product, and tech as it aims to scale its developer outreach programs both for domestic and global game studios.

“Casual games do not have meaningful monetization avenues outside of ads and in-app purchases (IAPs). Given this, there is room for disruption by providing a novel monetization avenue which supercharges game engagement without developers having to re-design their existing game economies,” said Romi Chandra, founder, CloudFeather Games.

He added: “Our first suite of features include an innovative Bounty Hunting SDK which 'democratizes fame' for gaming communities, allowing anyone to create custom bounties around their in-game achievements for the community to beat.”

“Romi [Chandra] and Yash [Chandra] have pioneered massive-scale system architectures for RMG platforms serving millions of users. They’re building a suite of competitive tools for any game developer to supercharge community retention and monetization while also providing innovative and new experiences for gamers.” said Justin Shriram Keeling, founding general partner, Lumikai.

CloudFeather provides a solution of full-stack competitive formats ('tooling kits') that offer developers the third pillar of monetization beyond IAPs and ads. The first most valuable player (MVP) launched for 10 gaming companies in December 2021 demonstrated great validation for such a product among potential customers.