Aristocrat plans to align with Indian startups to ramp up innovation

As part of its effort to ramp up innovation, $8-billion Australia-based gaming giant Aristocrat has conceived the idea of investing in Indian startups, specifically those seeking Series B, C and D funding.

In an interaction with DH, Fusion Labs Entrepreneur in Residence, Tania Darvell, who is helping Aristocrat operationalise its strategy, said the company is looking to partner with key players in the Indian startup ecosystem. “The Indian ecosystem is full of opportunity, with deep technology capabilities, combined with startup founders who are well-educated and passionate to succeed,” said Tania. Aristocrat CFO Toni Korsanos says, “Aristocrat is a proudly innovative company and this new innovation function will be focused exclusively on technologies that sit outside Aristocrat’s core gaming business while utilising their existing local tech talent.”

“Aristocrat has a strong land-based casino gaming business as well as a chart-topping social casino gaming app (Heart of Vegas). Aristocrat knows how to make great game content and technology, and we believe those skills are highly transferable to other verticals such as edutech for example,” said Korsanos Tania pointed out that in addition to accelerating internal ideas, Aristocrat will be making investments and exploring mergers and acquisitions, partnering with leading VCs and also sourcing opportunities independently.

Aristocrat will initially conduct a full landscape scan and will be investigating where opportunities lie within healthtech and edutech as well as potentially in fintech, Internet of Things (IoT), machine-learning (ML) and data analytics. “Aristocrat is prepared to consider a wide variety of opportunities, and to assess each on a case by case basis,” said Tania.

“In addition, Aristocrat is also looking for great founders who have a clear path, whose businesses have strong problem/solution fit and demonstrated signs of traction, where we can help them significantly scale with both investment and potential talent capability. We are also looking for experienced staff to lead the accelerator side of the function, and great investment and merger and acquistion talent,” said Tania.

She said that Aristocrat will seek to help startups scale by providing skills ranging from deep tech developers, mathematicians, graphics artists to gamification experts. “We are looking at expanding horizons into new operations in line with the changes in ecosystem and culture. We are also looking at how we can assist in solving significant challenges in India right now. It’s an exciting time to be entering the market, and we look forward to partnering and collaborating,” she said.