Bengaluru-based social gaming platform Matiks has raised $10 million (about Rs 95 crore) in a pre-Series A round led by General Catalyst, in one of the notable rounds in startup funding in India this week. The round, announced on 26 October 2026, also saw participation from entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala and existing investors Info Edge Ventures, Tanglin Venture Partners and Untitled Ventures.
Founded in 2024 by college friends Sudhanshu Bhatia, Mohan Kumar and Sushant Timmapur, Matiks began as a competitive mental-maths game and has grown into a social gaming platform spanning mathematics, memory, logic and puzzles. Players compete head-to-head with friends, take on daily challenges and track their progress.
Why investors are backing mind sports
The traction numbers explain the cheque. In September 2026, 2.2 million people played 48 million games on the platform, and daily active users have more than doubled since June to over 300,000. The company says it is already seeing early engagement in Japan, the US and South Korea.
Matiks plans to use the fresh capital to expand internationally, starting with the US market, and to build new games and social experiences. A large part of the plan is an AI-powered game creation engine that will let users build and publish their own brain games without writing code. Bhatia, who has a background in competitive mental maths, says the ambition is to make mind sports as culturally relevant as physical sports and esports.
With this round, Matiks has now raised over $13.5 million in total. Its previous round, in August 2025, raised $3.1 million led by Tanglin Venture Partners.
Why it matters for founders
Matiks shows that a niche, habit-forming format can scale without a giant marketing budget when the loop is genuinely competitive: daily challenges, streaks and head-to-head play turned a maths game into 300,000 daily users. If you are building in consumer, design for the rematch, not just the first session.