Finnish/Chinese Educational Games Studio BeiZ Secures $1 Million Funding

    BeiZ game studio has secured $1 million (€800 000) from Inventure and Tekes to boost the quality and marketing of their games. The Tampere, Finland based company has produced a number of educational and multilingual titles for iOS, Android, and Kindle, with one release also available on Nintendo DSi and 3DS. In addition to creating their own games, BeiZ also works on bringing partner companies’ games onto new platforms.

    BeiZ’s two flagship games are Lola’s Math Train and Alphabet Train. Lola’s Alphabet Train was launched in 2010 teaches letters and words to its target of three- to eight-year-olds.

    ”We believe that non-violent mobile games that can support a child’s educational development are the next growth area in gaming. BeiZ has a promising game portfolio, and has already managed to build an impressive international network. We believe it has every chance of reaching the revenue and market share targets that it is targeting,” says Tuomas Kosonen, of Inventure.

    BeiZ was founded in 2010 when when the management bought BeiZ Ltd.’s Hong Kong operations. The management now resides in Tampere, Finland, while maintaining operations in Beijing, where six of their 14 employees are located.

    BeiZ CEO Mika Heikinheimo says that Inventure was a great partner due to their China office, which helped with finding contacts and supporting their operations. More and more mobile gaming companies are starting to look east for both a market and talent, so I imagine these types of investments and support will become much more commonplace in the future.