It’s been nearly a year since Kamcord, the U.S. startup that allows mobile owners to record and stream their mobile games online, raised a $15 million round to increase its focus on markets in Asia, and today the company made some big moves in Japan and Korea.
Kamcord, which graduated Y Combinator in 2012, has teamed up with a host of top game streamers from those two countries to launch its new live-streaming feature in both markets.
The company debuted live-streaming in the U.S. this summer. The feature that allows creators to broadcast what’s on the screen of their device in real-time, with fans able to follow along right from their mobile or the web. Kamcord roped in a host of online stars to headline the U.S. launch — including Chief Pat, a Clash Of Clans specialist with 1.4 million YouTube subscribers — and it’s very much the same approach in Japan, where it launches tomorrow, and Korea, where it launched today.
Kamcord co-founder Aditya Rathnam told TechCrunch that its inaugural live-streamers in Korea have more than one million followers across other video platforms — they included high-profile Minecraft player Dotty — while in Japan, the company’s first partners count 600,000 cumulative fans elsewhere on the web.
“As in the U.S., many of these partners were looking for a destination where they can live-stream,” Rathnam said. “Most have given Twitch a try but it hasn’t worked out.”
It’s still early days for the live-streaming feature in the U.S., but, four months in, Rathnam said the signs are promising.
He claimed that active users spend an average of 20 minutes per day inside the app, while the most popular stream to date saw 192,000 unique viewers. Kamcord’s top eight U.S. partners have clocked over 300,000 followers to date with some, such as Clash of Clans player Galadon, grabbing more followers on Kamcord than on Twitch — 64,000 versus 22,000.
But Kamcord is already looking to go further. The U.S. startup has offices in Tokyo and Seoul, with five and two person teams respectively, and, while its central focus is the U.S., Rathnam believes it is just scratching the surface worldwide.
“We see so much potential in the rest of the world,” he said in an interview. “Our app is in English only right now, but a huge chunk of our downloads are in non-English speaking countries. A lot of our rivals aren’t doing much [in international markets, but] we want to be super aggressive [and we] need high quality local content.”
Rathnam said that, with live-streaming partners now established in the U.S., Japan and Korea, Kamcord is evaluating which markets to enter next.
“Is it probably going to be China or one of the European countries,” Rathnam told us, admitting that no decision has been made yet.