American Venture Capital Firm Andreessen Horowitz Invests In South African Mobile Games Start-Up ‘Carry1st’
American Venture Capital Firm Andreessen Horowitz Invests In South African Mobile Games Start-Up ‘Carry1st’. American venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced that it is leading a $20M investment in Carry1st, a South African mobile games startup, alongside Avenir, Google as well as angel investors including American rapper Nas, the founders of Axie Infinity, Yield Guild Games, and Chipper Cash among many others.
According to the firm, Carry1st is Africa’s leading mobile games publisher, serving over one million users today. Most notably, Carry1st has aggregated Africa’s disparate payment networks into a modern fintech platform, ultimately creating a one-stop solution for other game publishers to manage, distribute, and collect payments from end users across 90 different payment methods.
“In particular, we see a huge opportunity for a next-generation games platform and social network in Africa. Today, few international games target an African audience at launch, and even fewer localize and design for the continent — taking into account regional taste and languages. Payments is also a major barrier for international developers — as payment methods in Africa remain highly fragmented with 270+ mobile wallets, 500+ banks, and several card networks across 55 countries. For this reason, the majority of mobile games today in Africa accept payments only via PayPal or international credit cards – both of which have little to no penetration in the continent.” Andreessen Horowitz said in a statement.
Investments like these into the African tech space are essential for Africa’s growth so that it can compete on a global scale. Carry1st is one of the companies that has shown that Africans can utilise technology to bring innovation into the gaming industry, by doing this it has attracted investors that see the potential it has and are willing to help make it a big organisation. Through this investment the company will have enough capital to invest in its plans of expanding so that it can cater to more people on the African continent.
