Sembrani Kiqani and Bukalapak Invest in Filipino "Play-to-Earn" Game Startup

Sembrani Kiqani, funds under management BRI Ventures (BVI), and startups unicornBukalapak involved in an investment in Yield Guild Games Southeast Asia (YGG SEA) which raised $15 million through two financing rounds (financing rounds).

The funding will be used by YGG SEA to encourage the adoption of game-based games play-to-earn in the Southeast Asian region. For information, YGG SEA is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) under the auspices of Yield Guild Games (YGG), a game developer startup based blockchain from the Philippines.

Sembrani Kiqani is BVI's newest investment vehicle targeting the direct-to-consumer (D2C) as well as blockchain and its derivatives, including cryptocurrency. BVI is indeed encouraging its investment to strengthen the crypto ecosystem in Indonesia.

In addition to Bukalapak and BVI, YGG SEA also secured this funding from a number of investors including Crypto.com Capital, Animoca Brands, MindWorks Ventures, Poloniex, Jump Capital, and Overseas Bank Venture Management. Earlier in August, YGG SEA had received early stage funding led by YGG and Infinity Ventures Crypto.

YGG SEA is led by Co-Founder & CEO Evan Spytma. YGG's other co-founders are Dan Wang (previously head of Riot Games operations in China) and Irene Umar (also Managing Partner Discovery Nusantara Capital, VC startups gbreastfeeding based in Indonesia).

Expansion plan

With the involvement of Bukalapak and Sembrani Kiqani, YGG SEA will target Indonesia as one of the main targets for its expansion in Southeast Asia, followed by Vietnam, Singapore and Thailand. After expanding to these four countries, then YGG SEA will launch its expansion throughout the Southeast Asian region

This latest investment will help the company to bring targeted offerings to the gaming community in the region. The company will support the development of -based games play-to-earn in each country so as to accumulate game assets that can be used to build a player base in the local market.

"SubDAOs such as YGG SEA will be at the core of YGG's worldwide expansion strategy given that they have the power of local knowledge and networks," said YGG Co-founder Gabby Dizon.

More about YGG SEA, DAO makes use of the protocol open source pada blockchain based on Smart contract. Its primary purpose is to provide an automated way of executing governance decisions. DAO on YGG based on Smart contract which is built on top of Ethereum.

Play-to-Earn Konsep Concept

Play-to-Earn (P2E) is one of the derivatives of the NFT concept in games that have recently been on the rise. Blockchain technology allows players to buy and sell digital assets in the form of games. In Indonesia itself, there are already several developers who have entered there, one of them is Soulcops.

Currently, there are 3 digital cards in Soulcops that can be purchased by collectors before the official mobile game is released next year. Collectors can later play their NFT collections because each one has a rarity which can be used to achieve goals while playing the game, and can be upgraded with weapons and other utilities to create stronger characters. Another thing is to get tokens that can be exchanged for real money as an implementation of P2E.

In addition, there are several other game products that also lead to NFT based concept, including Arkipelago, Reality Chain, and Meta Forest Society.