Mobile gameplay-recording startup Kamcord presses play on $7.1M funding round

With a new app and Asian markets in its eye, one of the few companies working to add gameplay video recording on iOS and Android just got a bunch of cash to pursue its goals.

Kamcord, the maker of a software-development kit that enables gamemakers to add video recording to their mobile apps, reported this morning that it closed a $7.1 million Series A funding round. Investment firm TransLink Capital led the round, along with participation from DeNA, SV Angel, Innovation Works, KLab, M&Y Growth Partners, and XG Ventures. Kamcord plans to use the money to further fund development and expansion into key Asian markets. Last month, gamers used Kamcord to share over 1 million videos.

TransLink is an Asian-focused venture-capital group that will help guide Kamcord’s move into Japan, China, and Korea, which are three of the biggest markets for mobile gaming in terms of spending.

“We’re really excited to work with TransLink to help us grow our operation here in the States as well as in Asia, which is a huge market for us,” Kamcord co-founder Aditya Rathnam told GamesBeat. “In terms of gaming, [Asia] is bigger than North America and Europe put together, so we’re really excited to work with them on this front.”

Kamcord has already made moves to improve its software’s experience for Asian games. This includes sharing integration with the popular chat apps Line and WeChat, which are the dominant gaming-distribution platforms in Japan and China, respectively.

While TransLink will make no demands of Kamcord, it will offer answers to any questions the tech team might have about the very different landscapes of each region.

“We work very closely with gaming companies, mobile, and telecommunication firms in those countries to understand what is going on in their markets,” TransLink partner and Kamcord board member Eric Hsia told GamesBeat. “The gaming space is one of those where we have been most active because gaming has been a very big industry in Asia, and we’ve learned a lot from that.”

Kamcord isn’t alone in offering developers a way to provide gameplay video-sharing to their players. Rival company EveryPlay offers a similar SDK to game studios, and video livestreaming behemoth Twitch recently released a toolkit that enables livestreaming in iOS apps.

With the competition heating up, Kamcord’s move to Asia could help it compete if developers in Japan, China, and Korea decide to adopt it as a standard.

“Globally, particularly through our Asian corporate strategic investors and partners, we see the daily dynamic evolution of the mobile gaming industry. One constant has been gaming as a media and social experience that gamers want to relive and share,” said Hsia. “Kamcord’s mobile-game recording and sharing solutions, developed with a game developer’s mindset, empower developers to provide their gamers this enhanced experience. We are very excited to become a part of the Kamcord team.”