MUMBAI: Sequoia Capital India is backing a gaming startup that offers players a chance to try out some of India's most popular games. The Silicon Valley fund, will invest $15 million or Rs 90 crore in Delhi-based Octro that has developed online versions of Teen Patti and Tambola which are being played by nearly 2 million gamers daily worldwide.The eight-year-old company began as a mobile internet communications venture but pivoted to gaming two years ago.“We fought hard for six years, decided we lost the battle and gathered our troops,“ said Saurabh Aggarwal , a Stanford graduate who wanted his company Octro to “build something for the Indian audience." Before starting Octro, in 2001 Aggarwal co-founded PDAapps Inc, which was behind one of the early integrated instant messaging (IM) service called VeriChat. In 2003, the company was acquired by Intellisync which in turn later got acquired by Nokia.Sequoia, which announced a new fund of $530 million (Rs 3,100 crore) for investments in India technology startups last week, is focused “on what value this company (Octro) can have in the next 4-5 years,“ said Mohit Bhatnagar , a managing director at Sequoia Capital. Market sources indicated that Octro may have been valued up to Rs 400 crore or $70 million.It is not only investors that Octro has been able to hook. The company's games are amongst the ten top apps earning the most revenues on both Android and Apple's iOS store in India along with international titles like Candy Crush Saga and Subway Surfers.The funding for Octro will be used by the company to add new titles like the recently launched Tambola, besides expanding to other genres and geographies. Octro will also double its headcount from the current 25 to 50 in the next six months.Like most gaming titles, the company works on a freemium model where installation of the game is free but one has to pay money to buy virtual goods.For Sequoia Capital India, one of the most prolific VCs in India over last 8 years, this would be the first investment in the gaming sector.“We see this company as an early leader in the space. We see gaming as a market to reach 100 million users in India over the 4-5 years,“ said Bhatnagar. He said that Octro's high engagement level, multiplayer social nature and ability to make users pay for virtual goods through credit and debit cards is what clinched the investment.Other card-based games that have attracted funding include Matrix Partners' investment in Head Infotech, which is behind rummy game Ace2Three and claims to have over 3 million players. Tiger Global Management has backed Rummycircle.com, which claims to have nearly 2 million users.Large companies like Reliance Entertainment owned Zapak.com and ibibo, an arm of South African internet investment firm Naspers, have also introduced titles in Teen Patti.Investors have also seen returns in the segment, as startup accelerator Tandem Capital reportedly made a hundred-fold return on its investment in US and India-based mobile gaming company Bash Gaming, which was acquired by GSN Games for an estimated Rs 975 crore.