Rusk Media, Indian digital entertainment company aimed at GenZ audiences, has raised over $9.5 million in an extended Series A funding round to launch a blockchain-based UGC-led gaming platform. Seoul-based DAOL Investment and Audacity Ventures led the extension round with existing investors InfoEdge Ventures (IEV), Mistry Ventures, Survam Partners participating in the round.
Rusk Media has raised a total of $12M in the last three years and counts Nazara Games and NODWIN Gaming as their investors, among others. The New Delhi-based company is known through its content and IPs on social channels Alright! and Playground with over 500M+ monthly views, and their shows on OTT Platforms.
“We have confidence in Rusk’s competitiveness in IP creation across fiction, non-fiction, and e-sports entertainment. As Investors from Korea, we have seen the immense potential of locally generated premium content and scalability of strong IPs. We believe Rusk is well positioned to become an entertainment powerhouse with their plans on their IPs and IP led gaming platform,” said DAOL Investment partner and co-lead investor for the current round Chihoon Hyun.
Rusk Media CEO Mayank Yadav said, “With the behavioural shift of the digital native audiences – entertainment has transformed across 30-second snackable social videos, OTT shows, casual and AAA gaming. Our future plans are two-fold – firstly, scaling our content with OTT partners via our IPs in India and the rest of the world, with Playground leading the way for our expansion globally. Secondly, building a UGC-led social gaming platform that will enable game developers to create games and publish them on our platform using our game developer app that plans to leverage blockchain technology.”
While the company presently creates entertainment video content for their audiences, they will soon launch a UGC-led social gaming platform. UGC game creation is becoming widely popular globally, with platforms such as Roblox becoming staple destinations for the age group of eight–14-year-olds in the US and Southeast Asia, and Rusk’s platform will enable game developers to create games using freely available Rusk IP assets.
With these developments and an upcoming UGC social gaming platform, along with newly acquired capital, Rusk Media is committed to deliver big on its promise of disrupting the entire entertainment ecosystem.
