Making India Play Like Never Before

After completing her masters from University of Manchester, Saumya Singh Rathore decided to join ZO Rooms. After a brief stint with the company, she decided to launch WinZO Games, but with a twist. Contrary to conventional online platforms, WinZO decided to launch itself across Tier 2 to Tier 5 cities. Today, they are catering to the Indian audience in 10 languages and host more than 70 games on their platform.

Talking about the gaming industry, and her journey thus far, Rathore says, “In the Indian gaming industry, most of the gaming companies including the global giants have felt a vacuum, due to inefficient and unsustainable monetisation models.” 

This is because India is an atypical market when compared to any other market. Despite the depth in market and massive engagement (300 million smartphone users on an average spending 40-45 minutes playing games; 20 billion game downloads recorded from India alone in 2018), revenue could not be materialised because people have lower disposable income, limited awareness/ trust about online transactions. WinZO identified this vacuum and came up with a microtransaction-led social gaming platform. What started as a trivia app is now a full-blown social gaming platform with games such as PUBG MOBILE, FreeFire, Carrom, Cricket, Archery, Metro Surfer to name a few -- one app packed with all your entertainment needs. 

“WinZO’s registered user base in 12 months growth stands at 20 million and we clock over 200 million micro transactions per month and growing,” says Rathore. WinZO consciously approached to tap the real Bharat i.e. Tier-2 and below A through its deep down distribution strategy. This has made them an undisputed leader in the industry with a strong foothold in Tier-2 to Tier-5 markets in India. 

In addition, WinZO also partners with gaming studios and Indie-developers to solve the monetisation of their assets — small game developers who could be students making games, Indian large studios such as Dumadu Studio, and global giants such as Tencent and Garena — they have all partnered with them and have shown conviction in the model. These games are on-boarded via WinZO’s game developer console and the developers start earning revenue from the moment their games are made live on the platform. WinZO is also the first to bring a game developer console, a first in the industry 

However these achievements came with their own set of challenges. To overcome these challenges, they had to constantly innovate. Their WinZO Superstar programme empowers local key opinion leaders into their branding strategy. WinZO has included microinfluencers who promote it in their circle of influence on Tiktok, Youtube, and Instagram. WinZO Superstar empowers such influencers to earn up to Rs 50,000 daily. This all-inclusive model of WinZO is its key to success.