SingTel Innov8 leads $5m Series A round in China's Yodo1

Yodo1 is a leading publisher of Western smartphone games. Its publishing platform is designed to help developers successfully gain traction and monetize in the China mobile game market.

The funding will be used to meet rising demand from independent overseas developers looking to enter the world's largest mobile gaming market.

Yodo1 claims to have around 25 million active Chinese players using its iOS and Android games, which include Defiant Development's Ski Safari, XMG's Powder Monkeys and Robot Entertainment's Hero Academy.

"Gaming is one of the fastest growing segments in the smartphone ecosystem," said William Bao Bean, managing director of SingTel Innov8 in a statement. "Yodo1 has cracked the code on how to publish international smartphone games in China, one of the most difficult markets in the world,"

China is forecasted to have around 500 million Android and iOS users by the end of 2013 - most of whom play games on their phones on a regular basis.

"The challenge is keeping up with the demand from high quality studios," said Henry Fong, CEO of Yodo1. "Emerging markets such as China and Southeast Asia represent the most exciting prospects for mobile games developers, with close to 1 billion mobile subscribers migrating from feature phones to smartphone handsets over the next 2 years."

The rapidly evolving mobile applications and games space continues to be fertile ground for venture capital investment across the region. In the last two months alone several deals have closed.

Last month, Fidelity Growth Partners Japan has led a JPY1 billion ($10 million) Series B round of investment in Metaps, a Tokyo-based mobile software developer.  The same week, Indian Angel Network (IAN) and Sequoia Capital became shareholders in VC-backed XinLab, which operates under the brand Vuclip, after selling their share in acquisition target Jigsee.

 

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• Topics
• Greater China
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• SingTel Innov8
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