Building Bharat’s TikTok for Games, SimpleViralGames Raises Rs 4 Cr in Pre-Seed Funding

• SimpleViralGames, aka SVG, has raised Rs 4 Cr from WEH Ventures, Eximius Ventures, PointOne Capital, Force Ventures. WEH led the round.
• A few prominent angels including Ankit Agrawal (Founder & CEO of InsuranceDekho), Prashant Sachan (Founder & CEO of AppsForBharat) also participated in the round. 
• The raised funds will be used by SVG to build Bharat’s TikTok for Games via their app named ‘TimePass’ which shall host 100s of fun hyper-casual games on the platform which can be played with a tap of a button without any additional download for each game.

Simple Viral Games aka SVG, a hyper-casual mobile gaming platform, today announced raising Rs 4 Cr (500,000 USD) in a pre-seed round led by WEH Ventures. The round also saw participation from Eximius Ventures, PointOne Capital, Force Ventures & a few angels including Ankit Agrawal (Founder & CEO of InsuranceDekho), Prashant Sachan (Founder & CEO of AppsForBharat).

Founded in December 2022 by Rahul KR & Sourav Badami, SVG is focused on giving the best mobile gaming experience to Bharat. This hyper-casual gaming platform shall serve users from all age groups & make playing fun games a part of everyone’s daily routine. On their app named TimePass, users can discover & play lots of games without any additional download for each game. Simply swipe up to see a new game reel!

(L-R) - Sourav Badami and Rahul K R

Rahul K R is an IIT Madras Alumnus and ex- Lead Product Manager at Khatabook & Apna. He was first Product Manager at Khatabook. While, Sourav Badami is an ex- Engineering Manager at Gojek. 

Speaking of the platform, the founders said “We are making Bharat discover and play the world's best, most simple, fun and innovative games! Imagine a video game arcade, which has 1000s of games to choose from & you can start playing with a single tap, all in one single app.”

Currently, the app has over 20 games & is adding new games every week. The company has started working with game developers & studios as well to on-board their games onto the TimePass app.

“Our goal is to become a TikTok like platform for hyper-casual/casual games & empower game developers and studios to publish their instant games on our platform & get distribution right away & earn with the revenue share. In next 3-5 years we wish to have over 100M monthly active gamers on out platform. Built in India, Built for Bharat” said the founders.

Speaking on the investment, Rohit Krishna, General Partner, WEH Ventures said “Except gaming, almost all other content categories have platforms that focus on personalized, infinite scrolls. We think Rahul and Sourav have great chemistry and complementary skills to build a ‘TikTok for gaming’ platform for Bharat”

Launched in 2017, WEH Ventures is a sector-agnostic early-stage venture fund with a primary focus on startups solving India-first problems. The fund is very often the first institutional investor in a company and aims to support it through the early years and beyond.  In its six year journey, the fund has already backed several category-leading companies such as smallcase, Jar, Masterchow, Appsforbharat and Pratilipi which have been subsequently backed by top tier institutional investors.

Building Materials Enablement Platform Magma Raises $515K Led by WEH Ventures

                        Neal Thakker

Cross border B2B manufacturing and supply chain enablement platform for building materials Magma has raised pre-seed funding of $515k funding led by WEH Ventures with participation from All in Capital, PointOne Capital, Angelist India and marquee angels including Revant Bhate (Man Matters), Subin Mitra and Pratik Tiwari (Groyyo), Pawan Gupta and Abhishek Sharma (Fashinza) and more. Magma is a tech enabled manufacturing platform in building materials with a vision to enable growth across all levers for its partner factories. The funding will be used to scale the team across manufacturing clusters in India and invest in product and technology.

Magma is a global supply-first aggregator in the building materials industry with a mission to take small and micro manufacturers global. The company’s product includes a factory app that helps partner factories by giving them more demand through its AI based lead generation tool, access to global buyers, 1-click procurement of cheaper and quality raw materials leading to better conversion and retention, and easy to use technology to standardize their factory floors. Magma has already onboarded over 55 factories and is set to close its first quarter of business with an annualized GMV run rate of 3 million dollars.

Magma was founded in Feb 2022 by Neal Thakker, a recent graduate with a background in the building materials industry having previously worked at MSI surfaces and AGL Tiles.

Neal Thakker said, “The SME manufacturing ecosystem serves as the daily breadwinner for our global economy, yet continues to struggle due to no bandwidth in technology, operations and capacity utilization. As a sourcing manager and merchant exporter myself, I have spent considerable time with these factories and seen the first hand reality of their aspirations to sell their products all over the world. We realized their need for a partner like us and are excited to cater to millions of manufacturers in the times to come.”

Rohit Krishna, Partner at WEH Ventures, added, “We believe that manufacturing is going to be a key driver in the next leg of growth for India, and the China plus one policy is acting as an accelerant to this trend. We understand that each industry within the SME manufacturing sector is unique and the key is to find the strong wedge to keep the supply-side engaged and happy. On that note, Neal has been one of the most agile founders we have ever met; every week he not only brings new insights to the table on what the industry needs but he also turns those ideas into a product and deploys it incredibly quickly.”

The global building materials market is poised to hit a $1T market by 2026, with SME’s aiming for a $200B mark.