Sistema VC has just injected 65 million rubles (slightly more than $1 million at the current exchange rate) in Luden.io, a Moscow-based developer of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) games.
The fund has received a 25% stake in the company, Luden General Manager Alexey Katkov told business daily Vedomosti.
Sistema VC is one of the corporate venture funds launched by AFK Sistema, a major Russian, LSE-listed conglomerate. Targeting internationally-oriented early-stage startups from Russia and neighboring countries, the fund has raised no less than 10 billion rubles (approximately $161 million at the current exchange rate).
Luden, which defines its mission as to “combine VR games with science to spread cognition via fun,” was initially a VR R&D department of Nival, a leading Russian game developer which also enjoys VC support. It spun off from Nival and started to operate under its own brand very recently.
Luden’s first VR experiments began in 2013 with Oculus, which led to the launch of a short VR demo, titled ‘InMind VR,’ on the Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD), in early 2015. That same year, Luden published free games InMind and InCell for all VR platforms — including Google Cardboard, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Gear VR.
These games reached more than 1 million installs in the first year, according to Luden.
The company says it is now working on “new ways of mixing science and gaming as well as experimenting with VR and AR devices.”
The money received from Sistema VC will be used to develop new games for Google Daydream as well as other VR platforms, according to Vedomosti.
Last week Mail.ru Group — an LSE-listed Russian Internet company which owns a stake in Nival — launched its first VR game, VR Invaders. Just days ago, the group announced the acquisition of Pixonic, a developer and publisher of mobile games.
