As part of AMYP’s strategy to support exceptional founders, we made a capital investment in the Sangha Capital fund in early 2022. Sangha Capital is managed by Carolina Casas and Berta Casas, with support from a blend of strong investors from US, Europe, and Asia. This being Sangha’s second fund, blockchain protocol Polygon (Matic) was one of the first “fund II” investments.
Executing on a strong gaming and crypto pipeline, Sangha recently announced an investment in “OLA GG” together with Galaxy Interactive, Polygon, Bitkraft, Crypto.com, MorningStar Ventures and more. OLA GG is a sub-dao of “YGG” for Hispanic market. Here’s how it works: YGG players, called scholars, are lent in-game items that they use to earn tokens within a game. Scholars can cash out their tokens for local currencies, or eventually purchase the in-game items they were originally lent. This approach to decentralized gaming by YGG has ignited a paradigm shift that is upending conventional ideas related to work, play, and who has access to economic opportunities.
Ola GG is a strategic partner to Yield Guild Games (YGG) that is focused on serving the global Spanish-speaking market. Its goal is to create the largest community of Hispanic play-to-earn gamers, providing financial empowerment to over 530 million people in the Spanish-speaking market, through the creation of a comprehensive and sustainable virtual economy. Ola GG leverages YGG’s infrastructure and assets to better serve communities within the region to join the Metaverse through localized investment, education, and on-the-ground services.
Yield Guild Games is a decentralized gaming guild that pools investor funds to purchase yield-generating NFTs, and leverages players’ time and effort to optimise its community-owned assets for maximum utility and return. By merging NFTs and decentralized finance (DeFi), YGG’s mission is to create value for its members by developing the content and economy of virtual worlds and blockchain-based games.
If this new world economics remain a mystery, here is a short documentary released in May 2021 on the “Play-to-Earn” phenomenon:
“NFT Gaming in the Philippines”, reveals the story of a rural community that earned an income through play-to-earn gaming amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The documentary demonstrates how NFTs, and cryptocurrencies are providing transformative economic opportunities for people young and old in developing nations where jobs are lacking, and crisis relief has been limited.
Why is “Play to Earn” concepts also “Tech for Good”?
OLA GG wants to bring financial inclusion to 560M people in the Hispanic Market by building an all-inclusive virtual economy where members are empowered to make a sustainable living and drastically improve their quality of life with play-to-earn. Last year, when COVID swept into the Philippines, nearly 7.3 million people in the country lost their jobs and their livelihoods as the country went into lockdown. A rural province of Nueva Ecija, near Cabanatuan City, was particularly hard hit when the local economy came to a grinding halt. In response to the suffering, Gabby Dizon, a local gaming entrepreneur, began lending out his characters in a game called Axie Infinity to different people in his community. These characters, called “Axies,” were used to earn tokens in the game that could be exchanged by local currency. This new model, termed “play-to-earn,” marks a meaningful evolution in gaming economies. Soon, many players in the Philippines were earning more than they had at their previous jobs. Gaming was literally lifting an entire community out of poverty.
For AMYP, we cannot think of many better uses of tech to improve people’s livelihoods. Moreover, supporting a strong, female led fund management team based in Switzerland also fits well with Toni Piëch’s investment philosophy.
More about Sangha Capital here: https://www.sanghacapital.co/
More about YGG here: https://yieldguild.io/
More about AMYP here: https://amypproduction.wpengine.com/
