African mobile gaming platform, Carry1st, has raised $27 million to advance its publishing and digital content. The fund was raised from investors like Andressen Horowitz (a16z), Konvoy Ventures, Bitkraft Ventures, TTV Capital, Alumni Ventures, Lateral Capital, and Kepple Ventures.
The company said it will use the funds to expand internal capacity and grow its content portfolio. Carry1st’s portfolio includes exploring Web3 play-to-earn gaming and the integration of nonfungible tokens into the gaming experience. The company will also use the funds to expand the capabilities of Pay1st, the company’s monetization-as-a-service platform, which allows third-party publishers to make more money in Africa.
Carry1st was founded in 2018 by Cordel Robbin-Coker, Lucy Hoffman, Lucy Parry, and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu. The company is a full-stack publisher of social games and interactive content with a focus on frontier markets like Africa. The company does all the work on its games, from conceptualizing, development, and launching stages of its mobile games. The company recently started acquiring games, and then improves, relaunches and publishes them.
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Last year, Carry1st raised $20 million from investors like a16z and Google-parent Alphabet.
Commenting 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 videogames as their primary entertainment preference. 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 company said it has experienced growth through products like The President, which is one of its games, as well as Carry1st Shop, which is its online marketplace for virtual goods.