One of Montreal’s most spectacular successes, the loyalty platform for mobile games Mistplay, comes under the control of GrowthCurve Capital. The New York-based venture capital fund announced on Friday that it has become the majority shareholder of Mistplay “to support the company in its next phase of growth.”
No sum has been disclosed. Mistplay had in 2021 estimated revenues “between 50 and 100 million”, had specified last month to Press its CEO and co-founder, Henri-Charles Machalani. The company, founded in 2015, has established itself as the largest loyalty platform for mobile games, with some 16 million users and 350 games from 180 developers. Since its inception, it has distributed more than $ 23 million, including Amazon gift cards, Visa prepaid cards, and credits redeemable in the virtual store, PayPal, or the Google Play Store.
Missing ingredient
Its shareholders were mainly employees of Mistplay, to which was added in 2017 “an angel investor from Montreal”, Michael Novak, specifies Mr. Machalani. “We are not a normal start-up, we did not raise a lot of money at the start and we are profitable. ”
According to the CEO, the arrival of GrowthCurve Capital was the missing ingredient to propel Mistplay to “multibillion” revenues.
This is our goal. With their funding, we will be able to accelerate our projects, hire a lot of people, benefit from their network and their experience.
Henri-Charles Machalani, CEO and co-founder of Mistplay
This is GrowthCurve Capital’s first foray into the Montreal ecosystem. Founded in 2020 by Sumit Rajpal, who for two decades headed the Global Investment Banking division at Goldman Sachs, the venture capital fund invests primarily in small businesses focused on the use of artificial intelligence and data analysis. Its representatives will have a majority on Mistplay’s board of directors, but this is not a classic acquisition, says Machalani.
“GrowthCurve is not an operational company, it is a private investment firm [private equity fund]. Mistplay will remain Mistplay, we keep our trademark and we will acquire other companies. ”
Towards a stock market launch
The CEO did not want his company to become a simple subsidiary within a multinational. Several minority investors had expressed their desire to finance Mistplay, “but it was only money,” Machalani said. We wanted more, we wanted support, investors who would help us grow ”.
The mobile gaming market is booming, he recalls, with some major players like Playtika and Zynga increasing their acquisitions.
There are perhaps a thousand companies in this sector, it is starting to consolidate. We knew we had to make a move. That was where we got bought. We have to start becoming a big player ourselves who will buy other companies.
Henri-Charles Machalani, CEO and co-founder of Mistplay
Beyond the hosting of mobile games, Mistplay has been preparing a new adventure for a year, the creation of its own video games. Based on the knowledge acquired from players’ tastes, we want to develop simple games, with generally minimalist interfaces, halfway between what we call casual and hyper-casual in the lingo. For more complex games, we focus on acquisitions.
The other avenue is to offer developers monetization tools, in particular by sharing advertising revenue or a transactional platform for player purchases.
Ultimately, announces its CEO, we are targeting the IPO.