Legend of Toys raises ₹21 Cr to play for keeps.
A Bengaluru toy brand has hit ₹30 Cr ARR in 18 months — and it's now backed by six investors to build India's first premium play universe.
Two ISB alumni — Afshaan Siddiqui and Vinay Jaisingh — hit ₹30 crore ARR in 18 months selling RC drift cars. This week, six investors agreed to back the next chapter. The pitch isn't just toys. It's a category.
The Indian toy market has been quietly rewiring itself. Between FY15 and FY23, imports fell by 52%. Exports rose by 239%. Compulsory BIS certification kicked in for toys in January 2021. The infrastructure that once made it easier to import a plastic car from Shenzhen than to design one in Bengaluru has been steadily inverted.
Into that opening have stepped Afshaan Siddiqui and Vinay Jaisingh — both ISB Class of 2017, both with operator backgrounds at Livspace, Supertails, and Unacademy — with a company called Legend of Toys. This week, they raised ₹21 crore in a Pre-Series A round backed by six investors: Singularity Early Opportunities Fund, Veltis Capital, Enzia Ventures, DeVC, Atrium Angels, and Stride.
What they're building
Legend of Toys sells RC cars. But the founders' framing is deliberately not about cars.
They describe the company as a "premium play universe" — a character-driven product line where every toy comes with a story, a backstory, and a place in a larger narrative. The current lineup spans RC Drift Cars, Off-Road RC Trucks, 1:64 tabletop RC Drift Cars, and High-Speed RC Cars. Prices range from ₹1,599 to ₹8,799. The pitch is that you're not buying a toy. You're entering a world.
It is the same playbook that Mattel used with Hot Wheels in 1968 and that Lego used with its Star Wars line in 1999 — license, build, expand, repeat — adapted for the Indian D2C era. Whether it works depends on whether Indian consumers want a homegrown version of that playbook, or whether they want the global brands at the global price.
The numbers
The early signal is loud. Legend of Toys has hit ₹30 crore ARR within 18 months of launch, growing at 20% month-on-month. The company says a high proportion of sales come through its direct-to-consumer channel with unit-economics-positive margins — which is the language investors actually care about, separated from the noisier metric of GMV.
The ₹21 crore round will deploy across three fronts: new play categories (including DIY and adjacent formats), strengthened sourcing and manufacturing, and stepped-up consumer marketing and digital presence across India and global markets.
Why the investors are in
India is on the cusp of becoming a global manufacturing powerhouse, and Legend of Toys is going after one of its most overlooked opportunities: building a homegrown toy brand for the Indian kidult.
— Karuna Jain, Managing Partner, Enzia Ventures
That last word matters. The "kidult" segment — adult collectors, hobbyists, and nostalgia buyers — is a billion-dollar global category that Indian consumer brands have largely left untouched. Hot Wheels, Bandai, and Spin Master each built large parts of their business on it. Legend of Toys is the first Indian brand to position itself directly at that intersection.
Gokul Gopal of Veltis Capital pointed to something subtler — the company's free Lifetime Service offering, which lets customers send products back for repair rather than replacement. "That kind of conviction, paired with real operating chops, is rare," he said. In a category where every other toy is treated as disposable, a repair-not-replace model is a deliberate stake in the ground.
What to watch
The hardest part of building a category brand is timing. Move too early and the audience isn't ready. Move too late and the incumbents have crowded out the space. Legend of Toys is moving into a category that is simultaneously underserved (no Indian premium toy brand has scaled globally) and structurally favourable (policy and tariffs both moving toward domestic manufacturers).
The next 18 months will tell whether ₹30 crore ARR was a strong start or a ceiling — and whether the "premium play universe" framing holds when scaled beyond drift cars into DIY and other categories.
A full long-form feature on the playbook is in development for The Founders Desk.
Reader questions.
About “Legend of Toys raises ₹21 Cr to play for keeps.” — five of the most-asked, in the desk's own words.
01What is this story about?
A Bengaluru toy brand has hit ₹30 Cr ARR in 18 months — and it's now backed by six investors to build India's first premium play universe.02Who wrote it?
The Desk · Editorial · Filed Tenkasi. 3 min read · May 15, 2026.03Is this sponsored?
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