Indian digital entertainment company Rusk Media Pvt Ltd has raised over $9.5 million in an extended series A funding round. Seoul-based DAOL Investment and Audacity Ventures led the extension round with existing investors InfoEdge Ventures (IEV), Mistry Ventures, and Survam Partners participating in the round.

Rusk Media with NODWIN Gaming recently launched a gaming entertainment IP, Playground, built with gaming entertainers such as CarryMinati, Triggered Insaan, ScoutOP and Mortal and garnered over 200 million plus views.

The IP is slated to go global for the upcoming edition in December 2022 – January 2023.

While the company presently creates entertainment video content for its audiences – it will soon launch a UGC-led social gaming platform. UGC game creation is becoming widely popular globally with platforms such as Roblox becoming staple destinations for the age group of 8–14-year-olds in the US and Southeast Asia and Rusk’s platform will enable game developers to create games using freely available Rusk IP assets, the company said in a statement.

Chihoon Hyun, the partner, DAOL Investment, and co-lead investor for the current round, said, “We have confidence in Rusk’s competitiveness in IP creation across fiction, non-fiction, and e-sports entertainment. As Investors from Korea, we have seen the immense potential of locally generated premium content and the scalability of strong IPs. We believe Rusk is well positioned to become an entertainment powerhouse with their plans on their IPs and IP-led gaming platform.”

Mayank Yadav, the CEO, of Rusk Media, said, “Our plans are two-fold – firstly, scaling our content with OTT partners via our IPs in India and the rest of the world, with Playground leading the way for our expansion globally. Secondly, building a UGC-led social gaming platform that will enable game developers to create games and publish them on our platform using our game developer app that plans to leverage blockchain technology.”

Kabir Kochhar, managing partner, Audacity Venture Capital, said, “Rusk has quickly grown to be the leader in capturing Gen Z culture through content. It is staying ahead of the curve by leveraging gaming and content to extend the monetization layers of IP into the Web3 realm. Rusk understands its consumer intimately and its latest social gaming initiative will benefit the whole web3 and gaming ecosystem by bringing in the one thing that the web3 community needs most – relevant users.”