CRE Venture Capital leads $2.5m investment in African mobile gaming company
Carry1st has raised a seed round of $2.5 million led by CRE Venture Capital with participation from Perivoli Innovations, Chandaria Capital, Lateral Capital, Transsion’s Future Hub, and Kam Kronenberg III, among others. This round brings its total capital raised to $4 million. Proceeds will go to recruiting top-tier talent, investing in platform technology, and publishing new content. Pardon Makumbe, managing partner at CRE, and Henry Lowenfels, chief product officer of One Team Partners (former Scopely SVP), will join the board.
Carry1st is a mobile games publisher serving the first generation of African smartphone users. Since launching in 2019, the company has reached over 1.5 million users across the region. Carry1st Trivia was ranked the number one free-to-play Android game in Nigeria and Kenya and was named the best media and entertainment solution for 2019. The company plans to partner with international studios to launch multiple games in 2020 and scale its audience to over a million monthly active users.
“Social gaming is the largest and fastest-growing form of mobile media, grossing more than three times all other app categories combined. Our mission is to bring this world of interactive content to Africa and likewise to connect Africa to the world,” said Cordel Robbin-Coker, Carry1st CEO and former Carlyle dealmaker. “Our belief is that building a local publisher, with differentiated tech and operating capabilities across marketing, distribution, and monetisation is the way to be this bridge. We are pleased to partner with CRE and our investor group to accelerate this vision.”
CRE partner, Pardon Makumbe said, “We are excited to partner with the world-class team at Carry1st to take the pain out of distributing and monetising games across Africa. The continent is young, vibrant, and mobile-first – by focusing on the building blocks, we believe Carry1st is well-positioned to define the category, and catalyse the development of the industry for Africa’s over 1.3 billion consumers.”
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