LightFury Video games (LFG), a sport expertise studio centered on AAA titles, stated it has raised $11 million in a pre-Sequence A funding spherical.

The spherical noticed participation from Blume, V3 Ventures, MIXI, Occasions Web, and choose members of the Indian cricket staff reminiscent of MS Dhoni, Jasprit Bumrah, Hardik Pandya, Shreyas Iyer, Ravindra Jadeja, Tilak Varma and Sai Sudharsan. 

Based in 2024 by business veterans Karan Shroff, Anurag Banerjee, and Tina Balachandran, LightFury Video games is India’s premier AAA-focused game-tech studio devoted to constructing high-quality gaming experiences. Collectively, the management staff has labored on greater than 40 AAA titles.

The startup is growing ‘eCricket’, a cellular AAA sport scheduled for launch in 2026. 

LightFury Video games stated it is going to use the funds to finish improvement of the title and broaden its reside operations capabilities, together with post-launch infrastructure, content material pipelines, and methods geared toward supporting ongoing updates at scale.

“I’ve seen loads of cricket video games over time, and there’s all the time been one thing lacking. When LightFury confirmed me what they had been engaged on, I felt they had been attempting to shut that hole. It’s a giant endeavor, constructing one thing like this out of India for a worldwide viewers. I’m right here to contribute what I can from my time within the sport, and ensure the small print maintain up. The remainder is as much as them, and from what I’ve seen, they’ll do job,” MS Dhoni stated. 

The startup has invested over the previous two years in core improvement capabilities, infrastructure, and analytics methods to allow steady content material. 

“India has lengthy been one of many world’s greatest gaming markets. But it has not been in a position to construct a very world-class AAA sports activities title. With eCricket, we need to change that. We’re constructing from India for the world, with a really excessive bar on high quality, deep aggressive gameplay, and true-to-sport authenticity. This partnership ensures that we ship on that imaginative and prescient and produce eCricket to followers quickly in 2026. For us, that is a lot greater than a sport launch. It’s about proving that India can construct premium gaming IPs for the world, and never simply play it,” stated Karan Shroff, Co-Founder & CEO, LightFury Video games. 

“Cricket is a sport of tremendous margins, and that’s what stood out to me about eCricket. The deal with element and authenticity is spectacular. I’m completely satisfied to again a staff that’s considering deeply in regards to the sport and constructing one thing significant from India,” Jasprit Bumrah added. 

“Cricket is strain, talent, and leisure unexpectedly. Followers need to really feel that power. What excites me about eCricket is that it’s not attempting to make cricket smaller for gaming. It’s attempting to make gaming rise to the size of cricket. That could be a daring thought, and I used to be very excited when the LightFury staff approached me to be part of the sport,” Hardik Pandya stated. 

Earlier this yr, LightFury Video games had additionally introduced securing the worldwide participant roster license of over 600 skilled cricketers that includes stars like Chris Gayle, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Kane Williamson, Pat Cummins, Jos Buttler, Travis Head and Andre Russell, marking one of many largest rosters in cricket gaming.