Flipkart founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, have made an investment in a Bangalore-based offline games start-up MadRat Games. The startups raised about $1 million in this funding round, the other investors who have participated in the funding round includes founders of IT outsourcing firm GlobalLogic - Rajul Garg, Sanjay Singh, Manoj Agarwala and Tarun Upadhyay. Its existing investors Blume Ventures and First Light Ventures did not participate in this round.
Madrat Games will use the funds for branding, marketing and expansion. The startup use to sell its products through online sites such as Flipkart and Amazon, but these portals contribute only about 5% to its sales. Primarily, MadRat was selling through 2,000 brick & mortor stores and will now focus on retailing through 50 stores.MadRat Games was started in 2010 by 3 IIT graduates - Rajat Dhariwal, Manuj Dhariwal and Madhumita Haider. The startup started out by launching a Hindi word game Aksharit after that launched over 70 board games, puzzles and toys. Three months back the startup got accolades when it launched Autista, an app that helps kids with Autism disease.
The startup had turnover of Rs 3 crore last fiscal. The market is large, with the Indian toy industry expected to expand to Rs 13,000 crore in 2015, according to a report by industry body Assocham.
"Innovation is at the core of MadRat's approach to disrupt the market and led by a team of very talented individuals they enjoy a strong competitive advantage in the industry," said Sachin Bansal, chief executive of Flipkart.
MadRat plans to launch its own experience store in Bangalore soon and use customer data from the retail stores for future marketing and product design.
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