PlayHaven rounds up $8 million to finance international expansion

Mobile games are big, and they’re getting bigger. The potential for international growth fueled the latest investment round at relationship management and monetization firm PlayHaven.

GGV Capital led the $8 million investment along with existing investors E.ventures and Tandem Entrepreneurs.

“PlayHaven’s mission is to build the ultimate business engine for mobile games and give developers the power to maximize revenue with industry-leading user acquisition, engagement and monetization solutions,” said PlayHaven chief executive officer Andy Yang. “This new funding allows us to aggressively accelerate our growth in new markets and invest in product innovation, and we are thrilled to partner with GGV Capital as we build out a robust and global platform.”

PlayHaven will immediately use the investment to develop new features for its customers. Primarily, it promises to expand its features that provide insight into consumer behavior.

“Part of the capital is for us to expand internationally in 2013, in both Asia and Europe,” Yang told GamesBeat. “We’ll set up presence in Europe as well as Asian. We’ll set up local offices out there, but this also means forming a lot of interesting partnerships that we’ve been talking about for a long time but haven’t had the resources to go out and tackle them.”

Since 2010, PlayHaven has worked with mobile developers to provide them with tools that help them better optimize their player relationships. It works with developers like Glu, Game Circus, Namco Bandai, Sega, and more.

Prior to its investment in PlayHaven, GGV Capital invested in developer Glu Mobile, music-streaming service Pandora, and mobile-payment solutions provider Square.