Social gaming platform Grantoo raises additional $1.7M, appoints new CTO

San Francisco based social gaming platform Grantoo has announced it has raised $1.7 million in seed capital from a number of European firms and angel investors. The startup had previously raised $1.2 million in funding from angel investors and venture fund Angyal. Additionaly, the company has appointed Alan Price, formerly of EA Canada, to be Grantoo’s new CTO and support the platform’s push into mobile gaming.

Dreamt up by Dimitri Sillam and Mikhael Naayem while they were still in college, Grantoo is a social gaming platform that allows college students to earn their tuition by playing online social games – with one philanthropic catch; winners are required to pledge 10 percent of their winnings to charities that include Pencils of Promise, GlobeMed, The Hunger Project, Millennium Campus Network, Partners in Health, MAMA, Hope, and Engineers without Borders.

In a beta period started this past spring, Grantoo’s winners recieved over $30K in tuition and grants and raised more than $10K for charity. Participating institutions included top tier universities such as Yale, Duke, Berkeley, Stanford and more.

As of yesterday, the web platform is out of beta and avaliable to everyone, and two new, original mobile games are expected on iOS and Android in November.

Check out Grantoo here.