Cape Town-based Launch Africa has made its first ever investment into a gaming-tech venture with Skrmiish, the world’s first mobile play-to-earn app. This, as Skrmiish begins to wrap up a $2.5 million series A funding round.
Founded in South Africa in 2018,
Skrmiish gained a global following by giving gamers from anywhere in the world
an opportunity to make money on the blockchain playing the games they love.
This, warned co-founder Chris Heaton in an earlier interview, is not to be
confused with gambling.
As a leading Pan-African venture capital fund,
Launch Africa joins the Singapore-based Blockchain Founders Fund and Stellar in
this equity funding round. Skrmiish is expected to announce additional
investors soon.
Launch Africa – the first
institutional investor in this round – believes the seed funding enables
Skrmiish to accelerate scalability by integrating additional game titles,
grow its monthly revenue, launch into North and Latin America and complete
the preparation to issue its own Skrmiish token.
Zachariah George, managing partner at
Launch Africa Ventures, says as one of Africa’s most prominent and active
early-stage funds, they are acutely aware of the fact that the median age of
the African population is 18, versus 42 in Europe, 35 in North America and 31
in Asia.
He says, “A combination of having the
world’s fastest growing youth population together with an exponential increase
in digital skills transfer and connectivity amongst the youth, puts young
Africans in pole position to be both the leading consumers and creators of
content in the competitive video gaming world by 2030. The Skrmiish team are
well positioned to tap into the huge market for skill-based games where we can
finally see the true democratisation and monetisation of young gaming talent.”
Investment into Skrmiish will also
lead to the hiring of additional talent to bolster the already high-ranking
team and continue to drive the company forward.
Skrmiish boasts 100 000 players
Since launching its free-to-play
offering into the market in 2021, Skrmiish has acquired more than 100 000
players across more than 100 jurisdictions around the globe.
The company has since switched on its
unique MoneyMatch feature allowing players to earn real cash in every match
they play without having to wait for a tournament or find a peer to challenge.
Live across the United Kingdom and
other parts of Europe and targeting more than half a billion players currently,
MoneyMatch combines a traditional sportsbook approach with traditional AAA+
game play. Players get their MoneyMatch rating based off performance data once
they have synced Skrmiish with their game accounts.
The game-tech start-up also boasts the
world’s first competitive gaming wallet built on the blockchain. This means
that the company’s financial infrastructure is FCA regulated and built
with bank grade security, allowing users to be in complete control of their
earnings and have the freedom to move funds with high frequency and at a low cost.
Skrmiish chief executive Luke Grob
emphasises that the new partnerships are going to accelerate the team’s ability
to implement the Skrmiish economic value system and build a play-to-earn format
for the majority of the world’s gamers.
The ultimate goal is to grow Skrmiish
into the go-to competitive app with digital banking for gamers globally.
“Skrmiish will enable every gamer in the world to earn in every match they play
within the games they already love,” says Grob.
“This is a revolution in the accessibility
to earn while playing games and democratises the competitive esports and
blockchain based gaming industries. We’re fired up to launch our new MoneyMatch
feature across multiple game titles, taking the casual gamer experience to a
new level of excitement that we hope will delight players around the world.”
Source: ventureburn