Matiks Raises $10M Led by General Catalyst for Puzzle App

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Matiks, an India-based gaming company, has raised $10 million in pre-Series A funding led by General Catalyst. Indian entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala joined the round, along with existing investors InfoEdge Ventures, Tanglin Venture Partners and Untitled Ventures. The company has now raised more than $13.5 million in total.

The startup's namesake app has existed for two years and gained real traction this year. Matiks says its daily users rose from 22,000 earlier in the year to more than 300,000 by September. In that month the app had 2.2 million monthly active users.

Games against bots, then real players

Users pick from Math, Puzzle, Memory and Logic categories. They practice against bots first, then play against real people. Challenges and quests earn points, keep streaks going and unlock new games.

Matiks began testing a subscription this month. It unlocks game analysis, tips and tricks, practice and extra features. The app also sells in-game purchases that let players skip certain challenges, keep a streak or boost XP points. Until now the company had focused on user growth.

Most players are in India. Matiks has also seen traction in the U.S., South Korea and Japan, and it plans to add localization to grow in the last two.

Founders and plans

Sudhanshu Bhatia, Mohan Kumar and Sushant Timmapur, friends from college, founded the company. Bhatia has a background in competitive mental math. He started on the idea while working at American Express on an anti-money laundering strategy.

Bhatia said a competitive ecosystem already exists around mental math, and the team learned the same is true for puzzles and memory. He wanted the app to be as entertaining as physical sports, so it uses a dual format of practice against bots and matches against real players.

"For the last 10 years, the platforms have made entertainment consumption easy, but much of it is brain slop. We started exploring how we can make math-related games fun and entertaining like the other content," Bhatia told TechCrunch.

The company, which has 41 full-time employees, has also launched an experimental game-creation platform called Jelo. People can build their own games there, and others can play them. Google's new platform, Playground, is among the competitors in that area. Matiks plans to use the funding to scale Jelo and enter newer markets.

Rahul Humayun, a partner at General Catalyst, said in an email to TechCrunch that the product's pace of iteration and user engagement gave the firm encouraging signs. "We found the Matiks vision, product, and most importantly the community to be truly N of 1. The team's product taste and pace of iteration made it a no-brainer," he wrote.

Source: TechCrunch