Games2win raises $5 million for online games

Addicting, "snacky" games attract over 20 million teens and tweens around the world every month

Haven’t heard as much gaming startup funding news recently, but just because the market is cooling domestically doesn’t mean that the international market isn’t ripe for growth.

Games2win, a Mumbai, India-based online gaming company, announced Wednesday that it has raised a $6 million Series B round of funding from Clearstone Venture Partners and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB India Capital Partners). Added to a first round of $5 million from the same investors in 2007, when the company was originally founded, today’s Series B brings Games2win’s total funding to $11 million.

Having developed games for four years running, Games2win now offers over 400 casual game titles played by more than 20 million consumers monthly. The company organizes its games in categories like romance, arcade, escape, and--don’t laugh--dress up. Though primarily developing games for the Web, Games2win has also released a number of iPhone apps--mostly free but a couple paid too.

“We understand the mindset of a humungous 400+ million teen and tween gaming audience on the internet who nibble on our kind of games,” said Games2win CEO Alok Kejriwal, “both on their PCs, iTouch and Android devices. The new resurgence of mobility and internet in India is creating massive opportunities in the online gaming space and we are very well geared to dominate that space with our strong foothold here.”

A number of large publishers, including Yahoo, Viacom Kids and Discovery Channel have licensed games from Kejriwal’s company, which has probably proven a viable source of revenue. That’s in addition to in-game advertising.

Games2win, which was “hived off” from Contests2Win.com in late 2006, employs 70 people.