Mumbai-based Games24x7, which makes popular mobile games such as RummyCircle, raises $75M led by Malabar Investment at a $2.5B valuation
Context & Ripple Effects
Games24x7's $75M round lands in an Indian mobile-gaming market whose valuation ladder has been climbing fast: Mobile Premier League went from a $90M Series C at roughly $375M-$400M in September 2020 to a $150M raise at a $2.3B valuation just a year later. With this round led by Malabar Investment, Games24x7 — the Mumbai maker of RummyCircle — enters at $2.5B, nominally above its better-funded Bangalore rival.
The timing matters: weeks earlier, game-streaming platform Loco closed a $42M Series A at ~$145M, and London-based casual-games studio Tripledot raised $116M at a $1.4B valuation — capital is fanning out across every layer of mobile gaming, from real-money card play to streaming to casual puzzles.
First-order effects
- Games24x7 gains both capital and a $2.5B mark that puts it ahead of Mobile Premier League's $2.3B despite MPL having raised far more across four rounds — bragging rights in the Indian gaming arms race flip.
- Malabar Investment takes a lead position in one of India's two flagship gaming platforms, validating real-money skill gaming (RummyCircle) as an institutional asset class rather than a niche bet.
Second-order effects
- Mobile Premier League now competes against a rival with fresh late-stage backing and comparable scale, pressuring it to defend its user base and justify its larger cumulative raise of $225.5M+.
- Adjacent players like Loco gain a stronger pitch: a funded Games24x7 needs distribution and engagement surfaces, making streaming partnerships more valuable — while Tripledot's casual-games round shows global investors pricing the same category at similar multiples.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Indian mobile gaming consolidates around a handful of heavily capitalized platforms competing on user-acquisition spend, with valuation milestones arriving in single rounds what took rivals multiple years and rounds.
- Late-stage funds like Malabar treating real-money gaming as core portfolio infrastructure points toward the sector's economics — not its content — becoming the basis for future financing and eventual exit paths.
The trend: Indian mobile gaming is compressing its valuation curve, with real-money card-game platforms reaching multi-billion-dollar marks in fewer, larger rounds than the esports-app generation before them.