Bengaluru based augmented reality-enabled interactive educational games startup Play Shifu, has raised funding in a pre-Series A round led by IDG Ventures and IDFC-Parampara Fund. The startup however did not revealed the amount of funding raised in the round.

MobilizAR Technologies Pvt. Ltd, the parent company of Play Shifu, will use the freshly raised funds to extend its reach, globally, and to strengthen its technology and design team.

Founded in 2016 by by Stanford and IIT Kharagpur alumni Vivek Goyal and Dinesh Advani, Play Shifu is an educational startup that makes augmented-reality based games for children between the ages of two and 10 years.

“We strongly believe in technologies that bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds, specifically for early-learning. The tremendous global response for Shifu Orboot, the smart globe, has given us a major boost in the ed-tech space,” said Goyal in a statement.

The news was first reported in VCCircle.

The startup sells its AR-based games across several online and offline channels throughout India including Amazon, Flipkart, Hamleys, Babyoye to name a few. The startup most recently forayed into the US through Amazon.

Jatin Desai, general partner at IDFC-Parampara Fund, said Play Shifu was one of the very few Indian startups to have been able to commercialise augmented and virtual reality-based products successfully and sell to customers globally.

“The success of Play Shifu’s Orboot product on Kickstarter in such a short time with limited resources speaks highly of the team’s domain knowledge and market opportunity,” said IDG Ventures India Advisors director Karthik Prabhakar.

India is seeing a ramp up in augmented reality and virtual reality startup segment as just last week Kalpnik Technologies, a virtual reality-driven spiritual startup, had raised $500,000 in a seed round from a group of angels at funding and incubation platform Venture Catalysts.

Last month, another VR & AR startup GridRaster has a raised $2 million in seed funding from a group of venture capital firms, which included Exfinity Ventures, Lumia Capital, Pipeline Capital, NexStar Partners, Unshackled Ventures and Explorer Group.

Prior to this, in May, Chymera VR Inc, a virtual reality advertising platform, had secured funding from a clutch of angel investors, including People Group founder and chief executive Anupam Mittal, Airbnb’s global expansion head Varsha Rao, Google executive Surojit Chatterjee, and HHC Holdings chairman Nirav Choksi. The investment was made through the LetsVenture platform.

In March, virtual reality startup ShilpMIS Technologies had raised an undisclosed amount through IvyCamp Ventures.
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