Company Leads on Android with Chart-topping Games
PALO ALTO, Calif. – July 29, 2013 – Kiwi, Inc., an Android-focused mobile entertainment company, today disclosed that it has partnered with Sequoia Capital and secured a total of $9 million in funding led by Sequoia, represented by Alfred Lin, and AdMob founder Omar Hamoui. Guitar Hero co-creator Charles Huang and SV Angels also participated in the funding.
Kiwi has leveraged the executive team’s record of success at Trippert Labs, Playdom, and Disney to differentiate itself in the crowded mobile games space, combining high-quality game development with innovative distribution and monetization tailored to the Android platform.
“Shvet and I started Kiwi in August 2011 to build a distinctive mobile entertainment company on Android. We have been fortunate enough to get Sequoia and Omar as partners who shared our goals,” said Omar Siddiqui, CEO of Kiwi. “Over the past two years, we’ve built great games that surprise and delight our players, and have also built the distribution and analytics tools required for our business success. With four of our titles profitably achieving Top 25 Grossing ranks on Google Play, we’re excited to have gotten off to a great start.”
The popularity of Kiwi’s products has been driven by the company’s focus on character-driven games with entertaining mechanics, ranging from its adventure titles such as Shipwrecked and Brightwood Adventures, to its top-performing strategy game, Enemy Lines. The company’s most recent release, Mystery Estate, a mystery-themed hidden object game, has also been showcased by Google at its Nexus 7 product announcement for its impressive graphics.
Omar Siddiqui and Shvetank Jain have worked together since 2007 within the mobile and social games space at Trippert Labs (acquired by Playdom), Playdom (acquired by Disney), and Disney. Siddiqui and Jain, along with Kiwi’s VP of Product, John Hsu, built up and ran Playdom’s largest studio and produced Gardens of Time, the breakout hit on Facebook in 2011 that earned Best Social Network Game of the Year honors at the GDC Online Awards.
“Kiwi was a unique opportunity for us to partner with a proven and seasoned founding team who are taking a fundamentally different approach to building more than just another mobile gaming company,” said Sequoia Partner and Kiwi Board Member Alfred Lin. “We are looking forward to continuing to work with the team as they accelerate their explosive growth and broaden their reach across the mobile ecosystem.”
For more information about Kiwi, visit: www.kiwiup.com
About Kiwi, Inc.
Kiwi is a mobile entertainment company dedicated to building delightful games with a focus on Android. Founded in August 2011 and headquartered in Palo Alto, the 160+ person company is one of the few mobile developers with multiple Top 100 Grossing applications on Google Play. Kiwi has raised a total of $9 million in funding and is backed by Sequoia Capital, AdMob founder Omar Hamoui, Guitar Hero co-creator Charles Huang, and SV Angels.
www.kiwiup.com
About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital helps founders turn imaginative ideas into enduring companies. As the “Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs,” the Sequoia team has worked closely with legendary founders such as Steve Jobs of Apple, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner of Cisco, David Filo and Jerry Yang of Yahoo!, Max Levchin, Elon Musk and Peter Thiel of PayPal, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley of YouTube, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Omar Hamoui of AdMob and Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn. Sequoia is now helping the next generation of innovators build the lasting companies of tomorrow.
www.sequoiacap.com
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Media Contact
Tristan Kruth, TriplePoint for Kiwi Inc.
tkruth@triplepointpr.com
(415) 955-8500