WonderPlanet, a Japan-based smartphone game developer backed by messaging platform Line and advertising agency United, has raised ¥1bn ($9.2m) of funding from public-private partnership Cool Japan Fund.
Founded in 2012, WonderPlanet makes and markets apps and mobile games for smart devices. Its titles include a role-playing puzzle game dubbed Crash Fever which has been downloaded in excess of 10 million times.
The company will utilise the capital to increase its product line and enter additional markets. Cool Japan Fund’s managing director, Kazushi Sano, has joined WonderPlanet’s board of directors.
Akinori Sato, chief financial officer of WonderPlanet, told Game Biz the round boosted its total funding to $27.6m. It comes after WonderPlanet closed a $9.1m investment from Eight Roads Ventures Japan, a venture capital arm of financial services and investment group Fidelity, in July 2017.
Line’s corporate venturing arm, Line Ventures, invested an undisclosed amount in the company in April 2016, two months before Japan Asia Investment and Global Brain joined Nissay Capital, SMBC Venture Capital and Mizuho Capital, subsidiaries of insurer Nippon Life and financial services firms Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Mizuho Bank, to do the same.
Line Ventures had also provided an unspecified amount for WonderPlanet in May 2015, while Global Brain and United added an undisclosed sum two months later. The company received $1m from United in 2013 and a further $2.9m from Jafco the following year.
