‘Royal Match’ Game Developer Soars Five-Fold in 4 Months to $1 Billion Value

(Bloomberg) -- Turkey’s Dream Games reached a $1 billion valuation in a financing round that included Index Ventures SA and Makers Fund.

The Istanbul-based company secured $155 million in the Series B round, which vaulted it to so-called unicorn status. Balderton Capital LLP, IVP and Kora also joined the round, according to a filing on Wednesday.

The latest valuation represents a fivefold increase from February, when Dream Games received $50 million from venture capital funds including Index Ventures, according to Istanbul-based startups monitor webrazzi.com.

The firm’s debut product Royal Match was among the top 20 grossing games since March in the U.S., U.K. and Germany, with more than 6 million active users. It aims to use the proceeds “to grow the game everywhere,” said Soner Aydemir, co-founder and chief executive officer.

Games developers in Turkey have attracted more than $2.5 billion in investments over the past six years from the likes of Zynga Inc., Tencent Holdings and Netmarble Corp. Their easy-to-play games have been downloaded hundreds of millions of times.

Mobile gaming grew 4.4% in the first six months this year to $90.7 billion, the biggest segment in the $176 billion global industry, according to newzoo.com data.

Zynga’s acquisition last year of another Istanbul-based game developer, Peak, valued the company at $1.8 billion, making it Turkey’s first unicorn.

Non-gaming startups including grocery delivery app Getir and online shopping platform Trendyol -- backed by Alibaba Group Holdings -- also hit multi-billion dollar valuations in their investment rounds. Hepsiburada.com, another Turkish online marketplace, is seeking a valuation of as much as $4.2 billion in its Nasdaq listing, with trading scheduled to start Thursday.

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