Carmel Ventures leads Series A in LuckyFish

Carmel Ventures has made its first social gaming investment as the lead funder of LuckyFish Games, a developer of luck-based social games for mobile devices and social networks. The business closed on $1.6 million in Series A funding.

PRESS RELEASE

LuckyFish Games, a developer of luck-based social games for mobile devices and social networks, announced today the closing of $1.6 million in Series A funding from Carmel Ventures, a member of the Viola Group. This is the first investment of Carmel Ventures in this area, led by Daniel Cohen, General Partner at Carmel who also joined the Company’s board of directors. LuckyFish Games recently launched its first collection of social games, OMG! Fortune, on Facebook.

LuckyFish Games is a pioneer in creating content which combines unique fortune games with casual gaming mechanics together with traditional fortune games in social media.

The company, with 22 live games to date, was founded at the end of 2012 by Roi Fishman, formerly from online gaming company 888. LuckyFish has approximately 200,000 daily active players, close to one million monthly active players, and is growing rapidly. The company has already started recording initial revenues.

In addition to its Facebook platform activity, LuckyFish will launch an Android version of OMG! Fortune in the coming days and an iOS version by next month.

Roi Fishman, Founder and CEO of Lucky Fish said: “This funding will allow us to capture the rapidly evolving opportunity in the growing market of social gaming as a whole and social fortune games in particular. We are excited about the coming launch of our Android and iOS game versions and the rapid growth of our community of fans. The partnership with Carmel Ventures is also a validation of our innovative viral offering and our business model.”

Daniel Cohen, General Partner at Carmel Ventures added: “We found LuckyFish to have a unique combination of a professional management team, exclusive content, and a cutting edge BI system which enables real-time analysis. These are the key factors to LuckyFish’s growth in a very exciting market.”

LuckyFish Games’ OMG! Fortune is a free multi-platform (Facebook, Android, iOS coming soon) game where players can purchase virtual items, win prizes and enjoy social features that enrich the player experience.

LuckyFish has twelve employees in Ramat-Gan, Israel and additional staff in Eastern Europe. LuckyFish is planning to double its team in the coming year and is looking for brilliant people in the areas of marketing and data analysis.