Krafton doubles down on India with one other $250M wager past gaming

Krafton, the South Korean gaming firm behind titles together with PUBG and Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), plans to take a position one other $250 million in India over the subsequent three to 4 years because it pushes past gaming into AI, robotics, and deep tech.

Announced Friday, the brand new dedication will take Krafton’s complete deliberate funding in India to greater than $500 million, together with the over $250 million it had already invested within the nation since 2021. The funds additionally come along with Krafton’s dedication to a $670 million India-focused progress fund it unveiled with South Korean web conglomerate Naver and investor Mirae Asset in December 2025. At the time, Krafton stated it will contribute round $137 million on the fund’s first shut. The new $250 million pledge is separate from the expansion fund, the corporate confirmed to TechCrunch.

India has change into a key marketplace for Krafton, giving the gaming writer entry to the world’s most populous nation, with greater than a billion web subscribers and over 700 million smartphone customers. Krafton initially constructed its India enterprise round gaming, led by BGMI, a revamped and localized model of PUBG that has surpassed 260 million downloads. In current years, the corporate has additionally used investments in Indian startups to broaden its enterprise past video games.

Krafton’s run in India has not all the time been easy. The Indian authorities banned PUBG Mobile in 2020, together with a whole bunch of Chinese-linked apps, as tensions between New Delhi and Beijing escalated. Krafton stepped in after that and launched BGMI in 2021. The firm dropped Tencent Games as the sport’s writer in India and moved its India servers to Microsoft’s Azure cloud, modifications that got here as Krafton labored to deal with New Delhi’s issues.

However, in 2022, BGMI was itself banned in India, earlier than the federal authorities allowed it to return on a three-month trial foundation the next yr. Krafton has continued to construct across the franchise since its return and plans to launch BGMI Lite in India by the top of 2026.

Despite the early setbacks, Krafton continued to spend money on India and has thus far backed about 18 firms, together with 4 to 5 gaming studios, the corporate confirmed to TechCrunch. Its investments embrace Nodwin Gaming, Loco, Pratilipi, Kuku FM, and One Impression, amongst others.

The new funding dedication comes after Krafton chairman Chang Byung-gyu met Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi earlier on Friday. The two mentioned alternatives for India and South Korea to work extra carefully throughout gaming, expertise, and different rising sectors, Krafton stated.

Krafton has additionally been constructing out its native operations. Last yr, it acquired Pune-based Nautilus Mobile, the studio behind the Real Cricket franchise. The firm additionally not too long ago launched KIGI Academy, an industry-academia program geared toward coaching expertise in sport growth and digital creation.