Fuji Startup Ventures, the venturing unit of media company Fuji TV, Gumi Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of mobile game publisher Gumi, and Japan-based venture firm B Dash Ventures, have teamed up to establish a new mobile gaming studio called A-lim in Japan. It has not been disclosed how much stake each party will hold in the company or the size of the investment.
As part of the deal announcement, the gaming start-up released its first mobile iOS game called Brave Frontier, which is already available on the App Store. The game includes hundreds of characters, battle-style games and story options.
While the gaming market is fierce in Japan, having a backer such as Fuji TV, a large national TV network with an enviable portfolio of characters and intellectual property to gain access to- in addition to Fuji’s advertising power- is priceless for a start-up such as A-lim.
While Fuji and Gumi’s involvement in the deal will add valuable strategic advice and potentially future marketing ad investment, seed to late stage technology investor B Dash Ventures will be able to add mentoring to the start-up’s management through its incubation programme, if required. The venture firm has some of Japan’s largest technology and institutional investing companies as its limited partners including NTT, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, Gree, NEC Biglobe, and the Japanese government’s small business agency.