Cloudcade, a well-known game development studio based in San Francisco, has announced that it will invest $6 million to set up a game studio in Lahore, Pakistan.
Its Lahore-based game development studio will be led by Ammar Zaeem, co-founder of Caramel Tech. Caramel Tech has made a name for itself with its mobile games, with its 50-man strong team of game developers and engineers.
The investment by Cloudcade signifies Pakistan’s growing status as a tech hub in the region.
CloudCade was founded in 2013 by Di Huang. It is famous for its popular multiplayer game “Shop Heroes” which implores players to build the best shop ever. The game proved to be a veritable hit with the mobile crowd. Its available on the Apple iOS App Store, Google Play, Samsung Galaxy Store, Amazon, Kongregate, and Facebook. It is now also supported on the Apple Watch.
According to tech blog VentureBeat, who first broke the news about the funding:
“Pakistan’s emergence as a software engineering and startup ecosystem has been powered by an emphasis on technology education and a generation of tech-savvy youth.”
Ammar Zaeem had this to say about the news:
The country is seeing a dramatic increase in tech startup investments in recent years an. is supported by 90 universities, 25-plus country-specific accelerators, foundations, communities, and the government itself.
CloudCade will be investing $6 million in Cloudcade Pakistan over the next three years. Zaeem will serve as president of studios in South Asia for Cloudcade as well.
Caramel Tech Studios was founded by Ammar along with his two brothers Saad and Shayan. Ammar will be working at Cloudcade Pakistan, leaving Caramel Tech in the hands of Saad and Shayan Zaeem.
Caramel Tech was founded in 2011 by the three brothers. They have developed a handful of mobile games to date. The company was responsible for porting the ever-popular Fruit Ninja game to Nokia’s Symbian platform. It also developed a mobile card strategy game – Order of Elements – as well as an Astro Boy game for Hong Kong-based Animoca.
Apple also featured Blades of Battle, which was developed by Caramel Tech, on its App Store in 137 countries.