DCM invests in PapayaMobile, Appia, and more with Android-focused A-Fund

Investment firm DCM, which launched its $100 million A-Fund for Android startups back in April, today announced its first round of investments with seven promising startups.

The A-Fund is the first dedicated entirely to Android, and it competes directly with Kleiner Perkins’ $200 million iFund for iOS startups. DCM said it chose to focus on the Android platform primarily because of its massive growth. (Google said last week it has activated a total of 190 million Android devices, with 600,000 new activations daily.)

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Given its global presence, DCM is eyeing startups from all over the world for the A-Fund. It’s also stage-agnostic, so the startups the A-Fund is investing in are all over the map in terms of their maturity. The fund’s investors include Japanese mobile social gaming network GREE, Japanese mobile carrier KDDI, and Chinese Internet company Tencent.

Here are the first round of A-Fund investments:

Appia: Formerly known as PocketGear, the company relaunched earlier this year as Appia and helps carriers create mobile app stores of their own. It now processes over one million app downloads per day for its partners, including mobile operators, handset companies, and more.

Billing Revolution: A mobile payments company that offers single-click mobile payments.

PapayaMobile: The top Android mobile social gaming network in the US and China. It has over 30 million users, and developers have integrated its engine into more than 350 games.

Happy Elements: A social game maker that has taken the non-English Facebook market by storm. It has 2.5 million daily active users, the most popular game on the Kaixin001 network in China, and the second and third most popular games on Japan’s Mixi service.

Kanbox: A leading cloud storage and sharing service in China.

Loki Studios: Pioneering location and environment-aware smartphone games, Loki has launched the Pokemon-esque game Geomon.

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Kakao Corp: Creator of cross-platform mobile messaging app KakaoTalk, which has over 25 million users globally.