South Africa’s Carry1st, an Africa-focused mobile games publishing platform, has announced the raise of $27 million in a pre-Series B round today. It is the 6th funding round the startup has had since its inception in 2018, bringing its total funding to $57 million.
The funding round was led by Bitkraft Ventures. It also received backing from top-tier funds focused on web3 and gaming, including Andressen Horowitz (a16z) and Konvoy Ventures. Other investors participating in this financing round include TTV Capital, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital, and Kepple Ventures.
Speaking on the investment, Jens Hilgers, the founding general partner at BITKRAFT Ventures, said,
Africa is home to the largest population of young people in the world, and this upcoming generation will grow up digitally native with video games as their primary entertainment preference.
Jens Hilgers,
“We have full conviction in Carry1st’s impressive founding team and their vision of building out foundational infrastructure and localized content, ensuring that gaming and interactive entertainment in Africa will thrive,” the statement concluded.
According to the Cordel Robbin-Coker, CEO and co-founder of Carry1st, the support of some of the top-tier funds focused on gaming and web3 will add more resources, perspective, and assistance to help the startup achieve its goals.
This new pre-Series B funding will drive the startup’s growth and finance the developing, licensing, and publishing of new games. It will also help expand its embedded finance platform, Pay1st.
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About Carry1st
Founded in 2018 by Cordel Robbin-Coker, Lucy Hoffman, and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu, Carry1st is still on a mission to “bring awesome mobile experiences to the African continent”.
The platform, which started as a game studio, has grown tremendously. The company has begun acquiring games to improve, relaunch and publish. It has also started licensing for third-party games.
In 2021, Carry1st partnered with CrazyLab to launch Africa’s first accelerator for mobile game developers. In 2022, the game company signed a partnership deal with Riot Games “to pilot local payments for the company’s games in Africa” starting in 2023.
In partnership with Activision that same year, the company launched Call of Duty Mobile servers in South Africa.
Some of the company’s services, like The President (game) and Carry1st Shop -its online marketplace for virtual goods- have seen the gaming company revenue grow by 10x over the year, according to TechCrunch.
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Game development in Africa
The industry of creating video games has not received enough attention in Africa. The continent’s disjointed and unclear distribution ecosystems have adversely affected its slow expansion.
However, the number of gamers in the area has considerably expanded from e-sports to online gaming, especially as the adoption of smartphones has increased in the region.
According to a survey by Newzoo and Carry1st, South Africa is the region’s largest market for video games, with estimated consumer expenditure totalling $290 million in 2021, followed by Nigeria with $185 million and Ghana with $42 million.
The game industry is anticipated to expand globally with this new generation, and widespread digital inclusion, mainly as Carry1st and other local creators and studios are advancing the gaming industry in Africa with the introduction of emerging technologies.
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