Indian Gaming Platform STAN Secures Funding, Eyes AI-Driven growth and Global Expansion
New Delhi, India – [Current date] – STAN, a burgeoning Indian social gaming platform, has announced a significant funding round, signaling its ambition to leverage artificial intelligence and expand its reach beyond India. the platform, which aims to be a central hub for gamers to connect, play, and communicate, is set to utilize its new backing to enhance its AI capabilities for content moderation and creator tools, while also planning international expansion.
Founded with the vision of creating a fusion of social interaction and gaming, STAN has seen considerable growth, especially after opening its platform to user-generated content last year.This move allowed any user to stream, a decision that co-founder and CEO Parth Chadha attributes to the platform’s increased downloads and user engagement.
STAN’s business model also involves partnerships with major players in the gaming industry. Game publishers, studios, and developers, including prominent names like Krafton, Garena, and Roblox, collaborate with STAN to connect with the platform’s gamer and creator base. Chadha highlighted that nearly 100 such entities have joined the platform in the past two quarters, with over 20 new partners onboarding monthly, indicating a robust and growing revenue stream.
Looking towards the future, STAN intends to harness the power of AI, bolstered by its recent funding, to refine its platform. A significant focus will be on improving content moderation, an area where AI already handles 70% to 80% of the workload, with a human team managing the remainder. The startup aims to further reduce the reliance on human moderators through advanced AI solutions.
Beyond moderation, STAN plans to introduce AI-powered toolkits designed to empower creators. These tools are expected to include features for avatar and meme creation, and also functionalities for streamlined chat management, such as speedy replies and chat filtering. Chadha emphasized the collaborative effort with the Google team to develop and scale these “plug-and-play” models.
This investment positions STAN as another Indian startup benefiting from google’s AI initiatives.Previously, Google backed Toonsutra, a platform utilizing AI to enhance webtoon reading experiences. Google has confirmed a substantial investment of over $5.5 billion in India to date, supporting various startups including Toonsutra, STAN, Pixxel, and Adda247.
While STAN’s application is currently geo-restricted to India, it already experiences 5% to 6% of its engagement from international users, frequently enough accessing the platform via Indian phone numbers and accounts. The startup has outlined a strategic plan for international expansion over the next year, commencing with the Indian subcontinent, followed by targeted growth in Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Chadha also provided insights into the company’s financial trajectory,noting that STAN achieved profitability for a few months before strategically investing in scaling its operations.the company is now projecting profitability by 2027. Currently, STAN employs approximately 40 individuals, with a significant portion, less than 30, dedicated to product engineering. This latest funding round brings STAN’s total equity funding to an estimated $15 million.