Cape Town is a hotbed for entrepreneurship in South Africa, and is the home to the country’s largest tech-focused businesses – including Takealot and Amazon.
It is also a startup haven, having birthed various well-known startup tech companies like Yoco, Ozow, Luno, and Stitch.
Cape Town’s Century City also hosts the offices of a large gaming company that publishes many of the region’s most popular mobile games, and runs many of its most popular esports tournaments.
This company’s name is Carry1st.
Carry1st
Carry1st is based in Century City and was founded by Sierra Leone-born Cordel Robbin-Coker, who grew up in the US and worked in investment banking.
This career brought him to sub-Saharan Africa, and after identifying the region’s investment opportunities, he partnered with one of his former Stanford classmates to invest in early-stage startups on the continent.
Robbin-Coker quickly learned that mobile adoption was about to increase exponentially – and after witnessing that even sports betting sites could thrive on the continent, he decided to set up Carry1st.
Robbin-Coker brought on two co-founders – Lucy Hoffman, a former colleague from Morgan Stanley, and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu, who had senior experience in the mobile development sector.
Under their leadership, the company released its first game, called Carry1st, which was a live trivia game where players could earn rewards.
After the success of this game, the three co-founders identified an opportunity to help other companies launch their games in the region.
This is where the company has thrived.
Growing South African gaming
Carry1st has since become a game publishing juggernaut in South Africa.
It played a key role in the launch of Riot Games’ South African Valorant servers, and publishes several of the world’s most popular mobile games locally.
These titles include:
- Call of Duty: Mobile
- Brawl Stars
- SpongeBob: Krusty Cook-Off
- Gebeta (which it has since acquired and renamed Mancala Adventures)
It has also developed its own mobile games, including Mine Rescue 2 – with a 4.3/5 rating and over 500,000 downloads on the Google Play Store – and Mergedom – with a 4.3/5 rating and over 10 million downloads.
Payfast also sells in-game currency for popular games like Valorant, Call of Duty: Mobile, Clash of Clans, and EA Sports FC Mobile.
Carry1st even runs many esports competitions for the region, including the Carry1st Africa Cup.
The Carry1st Africa Up is a Call of Duty: Mobile esports tournament with a prize pool of $15,000 where the winner also qualified for the game’s World Championships.
To date, total investment into Carry1st has surpassed $60 million and includes tech giants like Google, Riot Games, Sony, and BITKRAFT, among others.
Carry1st
Century City
Loading ...
