ARC raises INR 10.5 Cr in Pre-Seed Funding led by Chimera VC and MIXI Global Investments
ARC, a gaming technology company building integrated hardware and software systems, has raised INR 10.5 Cr in pre-seed funding led by Chimera VC and MIXI Global Investments, with participation from Dhruv Vohra, Director, Meta, APAC, in his personal capacity.
The fresh capital will be used to accelerate the development and commercialisation of ARC X1, including hardware engineering, product validation, manufacturing and supply-chain readiness, and further development of OWL OS and ARC’s gaming software platform. The funding will also support team expansion, go-to-market capabilities and strategic partnerships across gaming, cloud, content and technology as ARC moves towards commercial launch and continues building its broader hardware-plus-software gaming ecosystem from India for gamers in India and other emerging markets.
The global portable gaming console market was valued at approximately US$3.89 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow at around 9.7% CAGR between 2025 and 2033. For ARC, the opportunity lies in India’s large mobile-first gaming community and the relatively low penetration of dedicated gaming hardware, creating room for a more accessible category of portable gaming experiences.
Founded by Jobin Joseph and Kaustubh K. Jadhav, ARC is building a gaming technology platform that brings together hardware, software and gaming experiences. The company’s first product, ARC X1, is a portable gaming system designed to make dedicated gaming more accessible to Indian gamers. Unlike a conventional white-label approach, ARC is developing its own hardware and software stack, with a broader ambition to build an integrated gaming ecosystem across devices, operating systems, software services and gaming experiences.
“ARC started with a much larger question than how to build another gaming device. We wanted to understand what gaming technology could look like if hardware and software were designed together from the beginning for markets like India. X1 is our first expression of that idea. This funding gives us the ability to deepen the technology we are building, accelerate product development and move closer to putting ARC into the hands of the gaming community that has been supporting us from the start,” said Jobin Joseph, Co-founder, ARC.
Kaustubh K. Jadhav, Co-founder, ARC, said, “We started ARC with a simple belief: access should not determine how deeply someone gets to experience gaming. India has built one of the world’s largest communities of gamers, yet dedicated gaming hardware remains inaccessible to a large part of that audience. This funding allows us to take ARC X1 from an ambitious engineering challenge to a product we can bring to gamers at scale. More importantly, having investors who understand gaming, consumer technology and long-term category creation gives us partners who believe in the larger ecosystem we are trying to build.”
Krish Anurag, Managing Partner, CHIMERA VC said, “Gaming has never been just about the game. Every major shift in the industry has been driven by a change in the underlying platform from arcades to consoles, PCs to mobile, and now increasingly to more personal, portable and connected forms of play.
At Chimera, we look for companies that can become infrastructure for the next chapter of a category, not simply participants in it. ARC fits that thesis precisely.
What excites us is that the team is not approaching this as a hardware company building another handheld. They are thinking about the entire gaming experience: silicon, hardware, operating system, developer and content ecosystem, and ultimately how a new generation of players accesses games.
India is already one of the world’s largest gaming markets by users, but much of the gaming hardware ecosystem was never designed with this consumer in mind. We believe there is a rare opportunity to build a globally competitive gaming platform from India, for a much broader emerging-market gamer.
The companies that define the next decade of gaming will be the ones that understand both the technology stack and the culture of gaming deeply enough to rethink how people play. We believe ARC has the ambition and technical conviction to do exactly that.”
Tomoharu Urabe, Managing Director, Investment, MIXI Global Investments, said “India has one of the world’s largest, passionate gaming communities. However, access to PC games remains limited mainly due to the cost of dedicated gaming hardware. Built in India for Indian gamers, ARC X1 can make handheld gaming more accessible, and we look forward to seeing more players across the country enjoy the experience”
ARC X1 is built on an ARM-based architecture powered by Qualcomm technology and runs OWL OS, ARC’s proprietary gaming operating system built on an AOSP foundation. Designed around controller-first navigation and gaming-specific optimisation, OWL OS is being developed to provide a gaming-first experience rather than function simply as a conventional Android interface. ARC X1 is being designed to support multiple gaming experiences, including native Android gaming, PC-game compatibility through ARC’s software stack and cloud gaming.
The company has already crossed 50,000 waitlist sign-ups and collaborated with Qualcomm ahead of commercial availability, providing early validation for its approach to building a dedicated gaming product from India. ARC has adopted a community-led product development model, involving gamers through early testing and feedback programmes to refine the hardware and software experience ahead of launch.
