Last week Runa Capital, a Moscow-based, $135 million tech fund that operates internationally, closed a $3 million funding deal with Playtox, a software developer and publisher that specializes in free-to-play mobile browser games. As a result of the series A financing round, Runa Capital has purchased an undisclosed minority stake in Playtox.
Founded in 2010, Playtox is planning to use the infusion of funding to expand its browser-based massive multiplayer online games (MMO) internationally and improve its existing games through the use of HTML 5.
Playtox claims that it has a 35% share of Russia’s mobile browser-based MMO games market, as its games have attracted 25 million registered users in total, one million of which actually play at least once per month. The company’s main business model is centered on selling in-game goods and improvements to users. In developing markets where people are less inclined to pay, the advertising model will be introduced, Playtox CEO Artem Zinovyev told Russian business newspaper RBC Daily.
Zinovyev founded Playtox in Siberia’s Novosibirsk in 2010, and since then the company has also opened offices in Germany and the Czech Republic. In December 2012, Playtox partnered with Opera Software to promote games through its Opera Mini browser, which is very popular in Russia and the CIS.
Playtox is Runa Capital’s first investment in the gaming segment. Over the past year, the fund poured $2 million into Dutch cloud service BackupAgent, $5 million into the Russian educational social network Dnevnik.ru, and $3 million into the language-learning startup LinguaLeo, among other startups.
