Matiks raises $10M to expand its math and puzzle gaming platform

Over the past decade, head-to-head brain games like QuizUp rocketed in popularity, reaching at one point millions of users. After that, battle royale games like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds had their moment in the spotlight. Lately, growth of mobile games has slowed down amid a barrage of AI content across platforms. Now, the India-based gaming company Matiks wants to steer people away from AI-riddled timelines with its math, logic, and brain game puzzle platform.

The namesake app has been around for two years, but has seen real traction this year. The startup said that its daily users have grown from 22,000 earlier in the year to over 300,000 by September. The app also saw 2.2 million monthly active users in that month, with the company’s growth attracting fresh investor interest.

The startup said Monday that it has raised $10 million in pre-Series A funding led by General Catalyst, with participation from Indian entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala and existing investors Info Edge Ventures, Tanglin Venture Partners, and Untitled Ventures. With this round, the company has raised over $13.5 million to date.

Matiks was founded by Sudhanshu Bhatia, Mohan Kumar, and Sushant Timmapur, who are college friends. Bhatia, who has a background in competitive mental math, said that he started working on the idea while he was working at American Express on an anti-money laundering strategy.

“For the last 10 years, the platforms have made entertainment consumption easy, but much of it is brain slop. We started exploring how we can make math-related games fun and entertaining like the other content,” Bhatia told TechCrunch over a call.

“Since I’ve had this background in mental math, I knew that a competitive ecosystem exists there. We got to know that the same exists for puzzles and memory. We wanted to make our app as entertaining as physical sports, so we opted for a dual format,” said Bhatia.

In the app, users can choose from Math, Puzzle, Memory, and Logic categories and play different games against bots to practice, and then against real players. Users can also play challenges and quests to earn points, maintain streaks, and unlock new games.

I have been playing the games for more than a week, and they are a good distraction for me, as I like games I can finish in a few minutes. The app hasn’t pushed me much towards purchasing more in-game items or shown distasteful ad pop-ups that would prompt me to uninstall the app completely.

Until now, Matiks has been focusing on user growth and just started testing a subscription this month, which unlocks game analysis, tips and tricks, practice, and additional features. The startup also allows for in-game purchases to skip certain challenges, maintain a streak, and boost XP points.

Bhatia said that while the majority of the game’s players are based in India, the startup has seen traction from other markets like the U.S., South Korea, and Japan. The startup plans to bring in localization to grow the latter two markets.

While Matiks is battling against AI slop, it isn’t entirely rejecting AI. The company has debuted an experimental game creation platform called Jelo, which lets users make their own games and let others play them. There is a ton of competition in this area, including Google’s new platform called Playground.

The startup, with 41 full-time employees, wants to use the funding to scale this platform along by expanding into newer markets.

Rahul Humayan, a partner at General Catalyst, told TechCrunch in an email that the product’s pace of iteration and user engagement have given the firm encouraging signs.

“We found the Matiks vision, product, and most importantly the community to be truly N of 1. The team’s product taste and pace of iteration made it a no-brainer,” said Humayan. The exceptional product love and power user behaviour are clear signs that the team is onto something special. We believe these are strong leading indicators for monetisation, with early results looking promising. The depth of engagement across surface areas like duels, social, Snacc, and now creation only helps.”