City exploration platform Questo has raised $1.5M in funding. The round was led by Early Game Ventures, with Sparking Capital also involved.
Questo enables tourists and locals to discover a city by unlocking challenges - via a mobile application - and reveal stories.
The Romania-based startup, which was founded in 2017, describes the self-guided tours as a “new form of urban entertainment.”
Questo says it has doubled the cities it operates in to more than 100 during the pandemic and increased the number of games by 150%.
The funding will be put towards further expansion, with a target of exploration games in 200 cities by the end of 2021, in particular in the U.S.
Alex Govoreanu, co-founder and CEO of Questo, says: “People spend most of their lives in cities. Our mission is to enable them to fully enjoy every visible or unknown layer of the city, no matter if they're travelers or locals. Questo uses storytelling and game design to teleport people to a fantasy story in their city, intertwining fiction with reality.
We like to think of it like Steam for real-world games, where our players are the main characters, and the local storytellers are the game developers.”
Games are available via the Questo app or website as well as on Tripadvisor, Expedia, Klook and Musement.
Christian Munteanu, managing partner, Early Game Ventures, says: ”We concluded our first investment in Questo less than a year ago and are very happy to follow up with a substantial commitment. The high in-app engagement, the global scalability, and the incredible traction even in times of the pandemic made the investment decision quite self-evident.”
Questo, a PhocusWire Hot 25 Startups 2020 company, announced it had raised €300,000 led by Sparking Capital in July 2020.
Vlad Panait, managing partner at Sparking Capital, says: “In 2020, Questo developed the organizational, partnerships, and platform infrastructure which will allow them to have exponential growth when tourism will start recovering.”