Company Overview
About Carry1st
Carry1st is a mobile gaming and digital content company founded in 2018 by Cordel Robbin-Coker, Lucy Hoffman, and Tinotenda Mundangepfupfu, headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa. The company operates as Africa's leading mobile gaming publisher and marketplace, building the infrastructure that enables global game developers and digital content providers to reach African consumers — a market of over 1 billion people with rapidly growing smartphone penetration and a young, gaming-hungry population that has historically been underserved by global publishers due to payment, localization, and distribution barriers.
Business Model & Competitive Advantage
Carry1st has raised over $60M in total funding, including a $27M Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Google, with participation from Konvoy, Riot Games, and other gaming-focused investors. Its key product is the Carry1st Shop — an e-commerce platform that allows African consumers to purchase in-game currency, digital vouchers, and game content using local payment methods including mobile money (M-Pesa, MTN Mobile Money), bank transfers, and local cards. This payments infrastructure is the critical unlock: most African consumers cannot use international credit cards or PayPal to purchase digital goods from global publishers, so Carry1st provides the localized payment rails.
Competitive Landscape 2025–2026
Beyond payments, Carry1st provides African publishers and global studios with user acquisition, community management, influencer marketing, localization, and customer support services — building out the full publishing stack that a global developer needs to successfully operate in African markets. It has published titles including Mancala, soccer games popular in Africa, and several global mobile game franchises. Carry1st represents the Africa-specific infrastructure layer for the mobile gaming market, analogous to what PUBG Mobile publisher Level Infinite does for Southeast Asia.
Key Differentiators
Strong Challenger
Carry1st is an established challenger with significant market presence and competitive offerings in Entertainment & Gaming.
Frequently Asked Questions
Similar Brands
DraftKings
DraftKings is a Boston-based digital sports entertainment and gaming company founded in 2012 by Jason Robins, Matthew Kalish, and Paul Liberman. Originally a daily fantasy sports platform, DraftKings
PlayStation (Sony)
PlayStation is the gaming brand of Sony Group Corporation (TYO: 6758 / NYSE: SONY) — the global consumer electronics and entertainment conglomerate generating ¥13+ trillion ($88B+) in annual revenue —
Catapult Sports
Catapult Sports is a performance analytics company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia with significant operations in Chicago that develops GPS and inertial wearable devices for athlete monitoring,
Evolution Gaming
Evolution is a Swedish B2B iGaming company founded in 2006 and listed on Nasdaq Stockholm, providing live dealer casino games and RNG content to online casino operators worldwide. The company develops
OpenBet
OpenBet is one of the world's largest sports betting technology providers, with its software powering some of the highest-volume sportsbooks globally, including William Hill, Ladbrokes Coral, and Sky
Google Ad Manager
Google Ad Manager is Alphabet's unified ad serving and monetization platform for digital publishers — combining what were previously two separate Google products (DoubleClick for Publishers/DFP for la
Compare Carry1st with Competitors
Side-by-side AI visibility scores, platform breakdown, and market position.
Claim This Profile
Are you from Carry1st? Claim your profile to see full AI mention excerpts, get weekly visibility change alerts, and optimize how AI systems describe your brand.
Claim Carry1st Profile →Track AI Visibility in Real Time
Monitor how ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude mention Carry1st vs competitors. Get alerts when AI recommendations shift.
Start Free Tracking →