Hike Raises Funds For Its Web3 Innovation Rush Gaming Universe RGU aims to provide brand new economic opportunities to the world starting with India.
By Saptak Bardhan •
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
Hike on Friday announced to have raised another round of funds from marquee web3 investors. Led by Jump Crypto, the round also saw participation from Tribe Capital and Republic Capital's Republic Crypto. The three strategic web3 investors have joined Hike's line-up of investors as it builds Rush Gaming Universe (RGU) a brand new social gaming metaverse where players can use their skills to play, earn & grow. RGU aims to provide brand new economic opportunities to the world starting with India.
"Gaming to us has always been bite-sized entertainment and now it can also be a means to provide brand new economic opportunities to the world. India being a mobile-first market needs a unique approach and our years of building for this market help tremendously in building a seamless user experience to bring the next billion users on-chain," said Kavin Bharti Mittal, founder & CEO, Hike.
Metaverse has taken the world by storm as people are keen to see what metaverse brings to the table with its use cases. The market for metaverse stood at $63.83 billion in 2021. The market is set to rise to $1527.55 billion by 2029 at 47.6 per cent compounded annual growth rate, according to a report by Fortune Business Insights.
"We are one of the earliest and most active investors in the crypto ecosystem. Having witnessed maturation of this paradigm, we believe web3 gaming is one of the canonical use case of crypto driven economy. Hike's Rush Gaming Universe is an exciting development for emerging markets like India and it's their unique mobile-only vision with a focus on building a seamless web3 user experience for the next billion users that's incredibly exciting," said Saurabh Sharma, partner, Jump Crypto.
Rush Gaming Universe is already one of the fastest growing gaming ecosystems in India. This latest round of funding will be deployed to expand on the RGU's innovative product strategy along with enabling high-quality hiring across functions. In 13 months since its launch, the Rush Gaming Universe is clocking in over 160 million gameplays every quarter with over $90 million in gross winnings annually across 1.8 million monthly active users (MAUs). Hike recently rolled out Rush Avatar NFTs for the RGU community and announced partnering with Polygon as it builds a fully scalable and cost-effective web3 mobile gaming platform to onboard the next 1 billion-plus non-web3-native users to the blockchain. The Rush Avatar NFT project is ranked #6 among the top NFT projects on Polygon. In building RGU's vision for web3 gaming, Jump Crypto will serve as the market maker to help the platform navigate exchanges, Tribe Capital comes with years of expertise in the web3 world, while Republic Crypto will act as a token advisory and sale partner.
