Gamer Participation Increased By 21% In Pandemic - Tarun Gupta, Ultimate Battle
The esports platform, Ultimate Battle, which is currently hosting popular online esports tournament titles like Call of Duty, Garena Free Fire, Valorant, FIFA20, CS: GO, DOTA2, Fortnite including Chess, has topped gamer’s preferences.
The esports company has currently garnered a player base of 3,00,000 which is growing daily. Tarun Gupta, Founder, Ultimate Battle, while speaking to BW Businessworld shares about the overall growth of the esports industry, the idea behind creating a one-stop-solution esports platform, plans, and more. Excerpts:
What is the growth of esports overall and in times of pandemic on your platform? Can you corroborate your claims with some figures?
We have been working hard to grow the Indian esports ecosystem with events and gaming content on the Ultimate Battle platform. While we have been growing steadily, knowledge of esports and perception of gaming has been a major roadblock for growth.
During the pandemic, esports got much-needed exposure and our platform witnessed a great shift in gamer's engagement behavior. Since the gamers were restricted to their homes and had all the time we could ask for, gamer participation on the platform increased dramatically by over 21%. Our analytics show a dramatic spike in terms of user acquisition and monthly active users. Work from home during pandemic gave our product team time to focus on the product and we evolved dramatically on the product side. Our product team utilised this time to roll out some great features during the lockdown. We acquired over 2 lakh users during the pandemic.
What is the mission and vision of your online esports platform?
Ultimate Battle’s mission is to build a platform that houses gaming communities of popular esports game titles and enables organised competitive gameplay for gamers for award and recognition.
At its core, Ultimate Battle’s vision is to provide the gaming community with an ecosystem that becomes a one-stop experience for gamers. Besides gameplay, Ultimate Battle is working on multiple engagement fronts for our gamers in the form of social networking, AIEL (Esports League), news Portal, and the game shop.
What is the idea behind creating a 360-degree platform for gaming enthusiasts - esports titles tournaments, e-commerce portal, and gaming and esports news?
Back in 2016, esports events in India were offline and had a very limited reach restricted to the city in which the event was organized. The events were unorganised and had haphazard protocols that lead to huge wait times and frustration amongst gamers. With Ultimate Battle online gaming, we could break the geographic barriers that enabled real talent to compete with each other irrespective of the location where they lived. Events became more organized with real-time time updates and notifications to the gamers which enhanced his overall experience.
In addition to the above we provisioned services that enhanced the overall experience of the gamers:
Live matches were broadcast so that everyone could enjoy the gameplay
A news portal was launched to keep the gamers abreast with the latest happenings in the gaming industry
Followed by a gaming e-commerce portal
Can you please tell the market size, opportunities, growth trends, and challenges in India's online gaming & esports market?
According to industry estimates, as per industry reports, India currently has around 365 million Indian gamers across mobile, PC, and console, which is projected to reach 410 million by the end of 2021. This growth in the number of gamers will fuel the esports industry in a whole new way. These are some key trends that are driving the growth of the industry:
Mobile gaming: India is a mobile-centric market and the number of gamers playing on mobile devices will keep on growing in the coming years.
Esports Platform/Leagues: Competitive gaming has become widely popular and its credit goes to top league organizers and esports platforms catering to the requirement of gamers.
Content creation: Content has always been the king. As we have seen in the past a lot of content creators and streamers have made a fortune. We expect to see a whole new breed of content creators cropping up who will help take gaming content to the next level in India.
The major challenge with the gaming industry in India is that it lacks a good legal and regulatory framework to support this industry. Esports is currently in its infancy and we are expecting things to mature as we move forward.
What are the foundation and flavor of Ultimate Battle and plans for 2021?
We had conceptualized Ultimate Battle as a platform to allow players to connect and enable them to compete with each other for the esports ecosystem to grow. The following elements give Ultimate Battle its unique flavor.
Designed for Multiple Gameplay formats (1v1, Brackets, Battle Royale, Ladder)
Scalability drove by Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence
Social Networking platform for peer to peer engagement
Multiple Engagement fronts in the form of News, Game store, Esports League
The biggest highlight of the year will be the 2021 ALL India Esports League launch, which is expected to go on the floor very soon. The League will feature some of the Top Esports Game titles along with Chess. In addition to this, we expect to add more games to the platform.
How technology, both radical and incremental determines the growth of the esports industry?
The esports industry from a technology standpoint largely depends on ISP infrastructure, Gaming Technologies, and Gaming Hardware. Any incremental or even radical change will either enhance the gaming experience or create new opportunities for the industry.
For instance, Better Smartphones and Internet penetration have led to a 2.5x growth in the number of mobile gamers in 2020 when compared to 2016. We are also seeing new technologies like VR gaming and Cloud Gaming will have a huge impact on the way gaming will be perceived in the future.
What are the top games on your platform based on user engagement? Can you share MAU's & DAU's on your platform?
User engagement for Free Fire has been at the top for the past year followed by COD: Mobile and Chess. We’ve been growing substantially to have an MAU of over 54,000 users and a DAU of 12,000.
