Telugu superstar Mahesh Babu invests in Shortgun Games; says, ‘India has extraordinary creative potential’

Telugu celebrity Mahesh Babu has made an undisclosed investment in Shortgun Video games, a Mumbai-based studio that builds video games for PC and consoles, becoming a member of the startup as a strategic investor.

Babu has taken a minority stake and can work with the studio to develop authentic, franchise-focused gaming mental properties (IPs), beginning with its flagship title, Venture Takedown.

“Interactive leisure is the final word frontier the place narrative depth, cutting-edge know-how, and international tradition intersect,” Babu mentioned in a press release. “India has extraordinary inventive potential, and the time is true to construct authentic characters and cinematic worlds from right here that resonate throughout the globe.”

He mentioned what drew him to the startup was “Jeet Chandan and Vidhit Mehta’s readability of ambition and their drive to create high-end PC and console experiences that stand shoulder-to-shoulder with worldwide studio benchmarks.”

Past performing, Babu runs movie manufacturing banners and owns the AMB Cinemas multiplex model. In September 2024, he made a strategic funding by means of his manufacturing home GMB Leisure in Fitday, a Hyderabad-based nutraceutical startup that sells plant protein, gummies, chips and bars. The Shortgun deal marks his entry into gaming as an investor.

Based by Jeet Chandan, its managing director, and Vidhit Mehta, Shortgun Video games started with a concentrate on Web3 and mobile gaming earlier than shifting into PC and console sport improvement in 2024.

The studio goals to develop authentic gaming IPs for audiences in India and worldwide markets. Its group contains former builders of the sport Rogue Heist.

The startup raised $1 million in seed funding from angel investors in August 2025. It mentioned on the time that the funding would go in direction of pre-production, constructing a minimal viable product of the sport and hiring, with the group working primarily out of India.

What’s Venture Takedown?

Venture Takedown is a high-budget, narrative-driven action-adventure sport set in Mumbai. It’s being constructed for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Collection X|S, and is geared toward gamers in North America, Europe, the UK and different international markets.

The only-player motion sport is at present in improvement, with its launch reportedly deliberate for late 2028.

Indian motion director Vicky Arora, whose credit embody the movies Uri: The Surgical Strike and RRR and the online collection Tanaav, joined the challenge final 12 months to guide its motion design. His group handles motion-capture choreography, fight visualisation and stunt mechanics, with reside stunt performances fed instantly into the sport’s digital character pipeline, in response to the startup.

When the studio raised its seed spherical in 2025, its flagship challenge was a third-person shooter for PC and console. Venture Takedown is now being developed as a single-player, story-driven third-person shooter.

Aside from Venture Takedown, Shortgun Video games is engaged on a cooperative indie journey sport known as Roll ’em Out.

“We based Shortgun Video games with a singular focus – to show that India can engineer world-class interactive leisure for PC and fashionable consoles. His (Mahesh Babu’s) intuitive understanding of large-scale storytelling, emotional connection, and mass resonance elevates our whole imaginative and prescient as we convey Venture Takedown to life,” Mehta mentioned.

Chandan added, “Our aim has all the time been to construct sturdy, cross-media franchises that transcend regional boundaries. His strategic involvement empowers us to scale our technical capabilities, increase our inventive expertise, and execute at uncompromising high quality requirements.”

A mobile-first market

Shortgun’s concentrate on premium PC and console video games units it other than India’s gaming market, the place cell video games proceed to dominate.

India’s video video games market, excluding real-money gaming, grew 17% to $1.5 billion in calendar 12 months 2025, in response to the Lumikai State of India Interactive Media Report 2025.

The report put India’s gamer base at 555 million, down 9% from 609 million a 12 months earlier, and located that every one ten of the nation’s highest-grossing video games had been worldwide franchises equivalent to Garena Free Fireplace, BGMI and Sweet Crush Saga.

Lumikai expects the market to achieve $3.2 billion by 2030, rising at about 17% a 12 months.