In-app gaming merchandising firm Rucept raises undisclosed seed fund

The company's products increase engagement, retention, and profitability for studios and creators.

Rucept, an in-app merchandising platform for video games, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Arka Venture Labs with participation from Silicon Valley investors. The company will use the fund to expand its team, operations and infrastructure.

Rucept enables game creators to display custom merchandise and blockchain-based digital merchandise inside apps or websites. It increases engagement, retention, and profitability for studios and creators. The company said it works with US-based studios Electronic Arts and Disney and has a growing list of clients across the globe.

Merchandising for movies is a $60 billion market and most of it is for a small percentage of cinema. Gaming, on the other hand, is a bigger industry and most of the titles have game assets that studios want to license to make collectibles and other merchandise. With metaverse making virtual worlds mainstream, this is set to be a $150 billion market. Already the market for licensed merchandise is $360 billion.

"The Internet has made it easy for creators to publish and distribute content, however this sort of democratization has still not fully materialized for physical products," said Mudit Khurana, chief executive officer of Rucept, which he founded in 2019. Khurana has expertise in the fashion and lifestyle ecommerce space. He has built verticals while previously working at Paytm and Snapdeal.

"Gaming is rapidly becoming the most engaged form of entertainment and merchandising is at the core of this experience. Gaming studios are finding it hard to offer a customized merchandising experience at scale," said Aditya Nishtala, who works with Arka Venture Labs.