Social game publisher Carry1st has raised $20 million in Series A funding to further expand product development in Africa, a continent that could become the main hub of the video game industry over the next decade.
The investment round was led by Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which has been very active in the blockchain space, with additional participation from Avenir and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Existing Carry1st backers such as Riot Games, Konvoy Ventures, Raine Ventures, and TTV Capital also participated in the investment round.
Carry1st will use the capital injection to expand its content portfolio, grow its in-house development team and spearhead a new growth strategy to attract tens of millions of new users. One of the fundamental pillars of its growth strategy is the development of an infrastructure to support play-to-earn (P2E) gaming, which allows users to monetize their gaming experience.
Alphabet’s investment in Carry1st is part of its digital transformation initiative in Africa, which was announced in October 2021 by CEO Sundar Pichai. On that occasion, Pichai identified Africa as an important engine of growth for the digital economy, with a forecast of 300 million people connected in the next five years. If current trends are any indication, many of those new users will be gamers.
As the leading publisher of social games in Africa, Carry1st appears to be in a unique position to harness this potential. In addition to providing a complete publishing platform, the company develops games with integrated payment solutions and online marketplaces to support monetization. The company has publishing agreements with a number of development studios, including Tilting Point, the publisher of Spongebob Cooking Contest of Nickelodeon, and the Swedish Raketspel.
Africa is fast establishing itself as one of the largest consumer markets for peer-to-peer payments and decentralized networks. Several major economies in the region, including Nigeria, have adopted Bitcoin (BTC) for payments and remittances. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimates that the continent’s cryptocurrency market grew by 1,200% between 2020 and 2021. The video game industry is expected to grow exponentially over the next 10 years, creating new opportunities for Web 3.0 and business models. play-to-earn.
According to a study by Newzoo and Cary1st, the number of gamers in sub-Saharan Africa will grow by 275% in the next decade.