The Hindu : National : `Desi' game developers get a $4 million infusion

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, May 01, 2005

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National

`Desi' game developers get a $4 million infusion

Anand Parthasarathy

BANGALORE: An Indian developer of computer games who counts almost all the major Hollywood studios as clients, has just won a seal of approval from two international Information Technology players — by way of a large infusion of capital.

Networking leader Cisco and multimedia software player Macromedia (recently acquired by Adobe) have together brought venture capital worth $4 million into Mumbai-based Indiagames Ltd — which amounts to a stake of just over 18 per cent.

Considered a global leader in the emerging niche of mobile content publishing, Indiagames, which has offices in Hollywood and Hong Kong, has converted some of the top entertainment products like Jurassic Park, Spy Kids, The Mummy, The Phantom and the Bruce Lee `chop suey' films, into games that can be played on PC, handheld computers and cell phones.

In a special telephonic briefing for The Hindu , on Saturday, from San Jose, California, Cisco Systems' Manager (Acquisitions), Sameet Mehta, said the company's investment of over Rs. 2 million was the first that the network provider was making anywhere, in the games software arena: ``We were looking to invest in a world-class product developer in the mobile data services business and the top player just happened to be an Indian company. This was a happy coincidence, since we had announced a venture capital arm for India just 8 months back.''

Rangnath Salgame, Cisco's president for India and SAARC added that the boom in mobile services — including high value broadband data services — had exceeded their expectations in India.

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