Bunch, a soical gaming party app, which allows you to play your favorite games with friends in a group with a video chat, has raised $3.85 million in funding from gaming giants like Supercell, Tencent, Miniclip, Riot Games, and Colopl Next.
Before the fresh funding, Bunch was able to pull $3.5 million last year from London Venture Partners plus joined by Founders Fund, Betaworks, Shrug Capital, North Zone, Streamlined Ventures, 500 Startups and more. They have now a total investment of $8.5 million.
The company aims to utilize the funding to grow the product development further and expand partnerships. Jonas Christiansen, previously Product Designer at Facebook, has recently taken the role of head of product. The company’s headcount is 15+ now, who are employed in New York and Toronto.
According to Statista forecasts, the global revenue from video streaming and subscription is expected to surpass 87 billion U.S. dollars in 2024. From 2016 to 2018, it has grown $36 billion from $17 billion.
The gaming startup has been able to attract colossal funding, while its Android app only has 10,000+ installs and 3.3 ratings, and the iOS app, however, has 4.5 ratings at the time of writing. This funding gives a message that the investors see Bunch, more than as an app, as a long-term industry standard for the mobile gaming arena. Bunch aim’s to disrupt the chat in games with social networking and video chat. The company CEO Selcuk Atli believes Bunch to be the Discord or Xbox Live, but for mobile games where users can connect with friends and join an audio or video chat. Some call it FaceTime for gamers!
FaceTime for gamers
Bunch has a lineup of first-party games on its platform, which users can enter and start playing. The app supports live audio and video chat for up to 8 players for games like Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and HQ Trivia. To generate revenue Bunch aims to introduce premium features which users can have with a subscription or buy using in-app purchase.
Another Houseparty?
Bunch reminds us of another group video and one of most talked startups, Houseparty. In 2017, Houseparty raised $50 million in Series C round led by Sequoia Capital. At that time, it was hot popular in teens and ranked number 7 in the Apple App Store for free apps. However, they sold themselves off to Epic Games (Forntinte maker) for an undisclosed amount in June this year.
