Bangalore based game studio Bombay Play has raised $1 million in Pre- Series A funding from Lumikai, India’s first exclusive fund for interactive entertainment. Launched in August, the fund intends to invest in 15 to 20 early-stage gaming and interactive media startups in India.

This move marks Lumikai’s maiden investment with its new fund; the round was exclusively opened for Lumikai. Additionally existing investors Leo apital and Playco also participated in the round. Post the funding round Justin Waldron, Co-Founder, Zynga will join Bombay Play’s board.

Bombay Play is founded by Abhas Saroha and Oliver Jones who have been colleagues for over a decade. Oliver has previously led game design at Glu Mobile and Zynga while Abhas led engineering at Zynga and Makemytrip.

Oliver co-founded Moonfrog Labs in 2013 and was instrumental in launching Teen Patti Gold, one of India’s most successful card games.

The duo came together to found Mumbai Play in 2017 and the game studio’s first multiplayer game Card Party has already seen more than 10 million downloads; Mumbai Play has also turned profitable.

The company is looking to build on India’s burgeoning mobile game market which is growing at 22 percent annually and is slated to reach valuation of $1.1 billion by 2021.

Consequently Bombay Play will focus on global games, but also leverage the growing Indian market. Speaking about the investment and the market opportunities Justin Keeling, General Partner, Lumikai, said, “There’s never been a better time to double down on live social games.

In a post-Covid world, people are looking for new ways to connect, to relate, to compete, and to share. Oli and Abhas have spent a decade developing fan-favorite multiplayer card & strategy games that have reached over 100M users, and are taking those learnings to build a next generation portfolio of live, multiplayer social games at Bombay Play.”

Bombay Play intends to leverage the fresh infusion of funds to accelerate product development on multiple live, social multiplayer card and strategy board games, while building on the success of its early hits. The games studio is now working on a second game called Lockdown Brawl, which is a card battle game with the name inspired by the pandemic.