Zupee Expands Global Footprint With Acquisition of Australia’s Nucanon

• The acquisition is a landmark India-Australia collaboration in digital entertainment.
• It strengthens Zupee’s expansion into AI-powered interactive storytelling, extending its ecosystem beyond social gaming.
• Nucanon’s proprietary AI engine enables dynamic narratives, evolving characters and immersive, user-driven worlds.
• The move reinforces India’s growing position as a global hub for AI-led storytelling and innovation.

Zupee, India's leading social gaming and entertainment platform, today announced the acquisition of Nucanon, a Sydney-based innovator in AI-driven interactive storytelling. The strategic acquisition marks a first-of-its-kind collaboration between India and Australia in the digital entertainment sector, bringing together Zupee’s vast distribution reach and Nucanon’s breakthrough narrative AI technology.

The acquisition will help Zupee accelerate its vision of building the world’s most advanced platform for interactive story entertainment. It will create an ecosystem where creators can craft branching narratives, dynamic characters and AI-powered worlds that engage audiences at scale.

Driving the Next Phase of Entertainment Innovation

At the core of Nucanon’s innovation is a proprietary world-building AI engine that aims to redefine how stories are created and experienced. The technology allows stories to unfold naturally, adapting to every choice a user makes. Dialogues feel authentic and spontaneous, characters remember past interactions and plotlines shift in response to each decision.

The result is a story that grows and changes just like real human relationships do. Users can move freely within the world without breaking its flow or structure. Every experience feels unique and meaningful, whether expressed through text, voice or visuals. It is a system designed to make stories feel alive and responsive, turning every player into a true participant rather than a passive viewer.

Dilsher Singh Malhi, Founder and CEO of Zupee, said “At Zupee, we have always liked to push the boundaries on innovation. We're very excited about partnering with Nucanon and building the future of how humans will experience stories. For decades, we've been trapped between two worlds: the emotional depth of cinema and the agency of games. With Nucanon we want to crack something fundamental — which is not just generating content but understanding narrative causality. We believe the Pixar of the next century won’t emerge through traditional film or animation, but rather through interactive mix of Videos and Games. And we're going to build it from India for the world.”

"The holy grail of interactive entertainment is true player agency within a compelling story. This is the challenge that has stumped the industry for decades, and it's the one we were founded to solve," said Nilushanan Kulasingham, CEO of Nucanon "Our goal is to build an AI that doesn't just generate text, it understands the story. With Zupee's backing, we now have the resources to take on this challenge at scale", he added.
A new chapter for interactive entertainment

Following the acquisition, Nucanon’s founding team will lead product innovation from Zupee’s India headquarters. The company’s proprietary technology will become the foundation of a new interactive storytelling vertical within Zupee, combining the company’s scale in gaming & entertainment with cutting-edge AI and creative design.

This collaboration marks an important step in strengthening India’s position as a global hub for gaming and digital entertainment innovation. By bringing world-class technology and creative talent together under one roof, Zupee aims to build next-generation storytelling experiences from India for the world.

The company is growing its team across product, technology and design. It welcomes creators and innovators who want to shape a new era of entertainment that feels smarter, more inclusive and deeply connected to culture.

Zupee Raises $10Mn, Strengthening its Position as a Leading Skill-Based Gaming Platform in India

 January 11, 2021, New Delhi: Zupee, a leading skill-based mobile gaming platform in India, has raised additional capital of $10M, with a total of $19M raised to date. This latest round is led by WestCap Group ("WestCap"), a leading US growth equity firm, with participation from existing investor Matrix Partners India.

This is the second round of funding successfully secured by Zupee within the last 12 months - with $8M raised in April 2020. This new capital will go towards further scaling up the venture, expanding market reach, enhancing user penetration for Zupee's platform, and focusing on delivering an exceptional and truly rewarding user experience.

Founded in 2018 by IIT-Kanpur graduates, Dilsher Singh Malhi and Siddhant Saurabh, Zupee enables users to play live quiz tournaments on their smartphone devices. Running 24x7, Zupee Gold has over 2000+ live quizzes covering a broad range of topics from spellings, movies, slangs and general interest topics. With the ease of use, an exceptional UI and a low entry barrier, Zupee believes in connecting the hearts and minds of its users through social skill-based gaming.

India leads the world in mobile game downloads with more than 5 billion downloads in 2019. The online gaming market is growing at 40% annually and is expected to reach $14 billion in India by 2025. Zupee is proud to have been founded in India with a multicultural and inclusive team, with a global ethos.

"We have driven an exponential month-on-month growth this year. This fresh round of funding enables us to double down on our scaling efforts. We remain committed to delivering a fantastic user experience for our rapidly expanding user community. Bringing joy and making each moment count is what truly propels us forward in doing our bit towards bringing the next Billion online- solving for connectivity, local language content, culture and keeping the internet a place for productive engagement", said Dilsher Singh, Founder and CEO of Zupee.

"Zupee is delivering a product that delights mobile users in India," said Dan Fischer, WestCap. "Zupee provides fun and fair competition that connects people in a meaningful way and its industry-leading growth is a testament to the team's vision. We are excited to partner with Dilsher and the entire Zupee team as they continue to rapidly scale."

India continues to be one of the largest markets for mobile gaming in the world, we believe that Zupee is positioned well to become the market leader in the skill-based gaming space. We are delighted to partner with them and have a ringside view of their astonishing growth journey. They have shown great maturity and sagacity in their approach towards business and we feel thrilled to see them making great strides especially in a post covid world where they have emerged even stronger, more relevant and truly resilient," said Harish Bahl Founder and Chairman of Smile Group.

Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India, added, "2020 witnessed online gaming truly explode in India, and Zupee's accelerated growth during the year is a clear testament to this surge. We're privileged to have partnered early with Dilsher and the team and look forward to the next phase of the journey."

 

About Zupee.com

Zupee is a skill-based gaming app where you can play live quiz tournaments with friends, local communities & other players. The platform places mission-like importance on bringing positive and engaging experiences to its users. Relying on knowledge across a host of topics, strong returns, high user engagement, and sound tech, Zupee has been winning hearts and minds in a game of skill.

IIT Kanpur Alumni-founded Skill Based Gaming Startup Zupee Raises US $8M in Series A

Skill Based Gaming Company Zupee founded by IIT Kanpur Graduates Dilsher Singh Malhi and Siddhant Saurabh announced today that it has raised US $8 million in its Series A funding round. Matrix Partners India led this investment round with participation from Falcon Edge Capital, WestCap Group, Orios Venture Partners and Zupee’s early stage investor Smile Group.

Zupee runs live quiz tournaments on its app, in which users compete with friends and other players for prizes. The Zupee app has more than 2000 live quiz tournaments running through 24 hours every day, covering over 100 topics that range from Bollywood, Hollywood, and Sports to Maths, Spelling, and Hinglish among others.

The online gaming market is growing at 40% annually and is expected to reach a $14-billion market in India by 2025. In the last 12 months, Zupee’s growth has galloped past the industry, with the app’s user-base and GTV growing over 100 and 700 times respectively.

Dilsher Singh Malhi, CEO of Zupee said, “Our strong growth in last year has reaffirmed our faith in building a gaming app that combines people’s love for trivia and quizzes with a chance to win real money. This is why we are thrilled to welcome marquee names like Matrix, Falcon Edge, WestCap and Orios as new investors in Zupee. We at Zupee are geared to serve 100 million users and be a leader in skill based gaming in India. We will be using the capital raised from this round to invest deeper in Technology, Team and Marketing.”

“Zupee has built a truly unique mobile-gaming product that allows players to showcase their knowledge, while at the same time tap into their intrinsic need to compete with their friends and other gamers. India leads the world in mobile game downloads with more than 5B downloads in 2019. Zupee’s strong growth in users and total gameplay is a testament to the potential of the platform. We are proud to partner with Dilsher & Siddhant and look forward to supporting them as they gear up to dominate the skill-based gaming market,” said Tarun Davda, Managing Director, Matrix India.

Last year, Zupee announced that it had raised $1 million in seed funding from Smile Group, which incubated the startup. “Gaming is the future of entertainment and we were lucky to back Zupee’s extremely talented founders in our venture builder platform. Zupee has emerged as one of the leading players in skill based gaming & we remain excited to extend our platform’s support in this next phase of Zupee’s growth,” said Harish Bahl and Manish Vij, Founder and Co-founder of Smile Group in a joint statement.

The Zupee app is currently available in both English and Hindi and has over 5 million downloads as of April 1, 2020. The app sees over 10 million gameplays every month.

About Zupee.com

Zupee.com is an online skill based gaming app. Users can pick any topic ranging from movies to sports and academics. For more information, please visit https://zupee.com/