Matiks Raises $10M as Math Puzzle App Hits 2.2M Users

India-based gaming startup Matiks has raised $10 million in pre-Series A funding led by General Catalyst, betting that players tired of AI-generated content will return to competitive brain games. The round, announced Monday, included Indian entrepreneur Ronnie Screwvala and existing investors Info Edge Ventures, Tanglin Venture Partners, and Untitled Ventures. The startup has now raised more than $13.5 million to date.

The numbers behind the round are unusually steep for a two-year-old app. Daily users grew from 22,000 early this year to over 300,000 by September — roughly a thirteenfold increase in under a year. The app recorded 2.2 million monthly active users that same month.

Why are investors backing a puzzle app now?

Co-founder Sudhanshu Bhatia frames the opportunity as a reaction against a decade of passive, low-effort consumption. He started working on the idea while employed at American Express on an anti-money laundering strategy, drawing on a background in competitive mental math.

"For the last 10 years, the platforms have made entertainment consumption easy, but much of it is brain slop. We started exploring how we can make math-related games fun and entertaining like the other content," Bhatia told TechCrunch.

"Since I've had this background in mental math, I knew that a competitive ecosystem exists there. We got to know that the same exists for puzzles and memory. We wanted to make our app as entertaining as physical sports, so we opted for a dual format," he said.

Matiks was founded by Bhatia, Mohan Kumar, and Sushant Timmapur, who are college friends. The app offers four categories — Math, Puzzle, Memory, and Logic — where users play against bots to practice and then against real players. Challenges and quests let users earn points, maintain streaks, and unlock new games.

The pitch mirrors earlier consumer gaming waves: head-to-head quiz games like QuizUp once reached millions of users, before battle royale titles like Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds took the spotlight. Matiks is effectively arguing the cycle is turning again, now against AI-saturated feeds.

How does Matiks make money?

Until now, it mostly hasn't. The company has focused on user growth and only began testing a subscription this month. The subscription unlocks game analysis, tips and tricks, practice modes, and additional features. The app also sells in-game purchases to skip challenges, maintain streaks, and boost XP points.

In other words, the $10 million arrives before the revenue model has been proven at scale — the standard risk in pre-Series A consumer gaming, but a risk nonetheless.

The company reports restrained monetization pressure in the product itself. A week of hands-on play found no aggressive pushes toward in-game purchases and no intrusive ad pop-ups, with games designed to be finished in minutes.

Where does the money go?

The majority of players are in India, but the startup reports traction in the U.S., South Korea, and Japan, and plans to add localization to grow the latter two markets. The company, which has 41 full-time employees, will also use the funding to scale its experimental game creation platform, Jelo, which lets users build games for others to play.

Jelo enters crowded territory. Google recently launched a competing platform called Playground, one of several players chasing user-generated game creation.

Rahul Humayan, a partner at General Catalyst, said the product's pace of iteration and user engagement gave the firm encouraging signs.

"We found the Matiks vision, product, and most importantly the community to be truly N of 1. The team's product taste and pace of iteration made it a no-brainer," Humayan said. He added that exceptional product love and power user behavior are strong leading indicators for monetisation, with early results looking promising, and cited depth of engagement across duels, social features, Snacc, and now creation.

Notably absent from the announcement: any revenue figures or retention data. Investor enthusiasm rests on engagement metrics — daily and monthly actives, power-user behavior — rather than demonstrated earnings. The bet now is that a subscription model tested for barely a month can convert a fast-growing, mostly Indian user base into paying customers across new markets.