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Recap 2008: Online & Mobile Gaming

Online gaming has been heavily invested in since Reliance ADAG’s Zapak.com came onto the scene in 2006 and started investing crores of rupees in this business. 2008 was a year in which online gaming players forged tie ups, went mobile and also chalked out plans to go international. The top online gaming sites of India are zapak.com, games2win.com, indiagames.com and new initiatives this year by sify in antzill.com. As far as mobile games are concerned there are multiple players but the name that comes at top of the mind is jump games and 7seas technologies. There is also hovr and the recent entrant to the Indian market in greystripe.

Lets have a look at the year gone by for online and mobile gaming in India:

The year started with our exclusive interview with Salil Bhargava of Jump games who spoke about mobile gaming and its potential in India. The year 2007 had ended with top online gaming players looking to make strides offline with increased gaming tournaments and gaming cafe’s and thats what made us question whether gaming as a form of entertainment could challenge TV?

There were also new models of engaged gaming suggested in the start of the year and a couple of gaming surveys by games2win.com and indiagames threw up interesting results like Online gaming had 3 million gamers and Gamers spend an average of 10 minutes per visit. As per plan Zapak starting making strides into launching a more aggressive offline presence by announcing a new gaming tournament for corporates! Whats more it even started luring online gamers with promise of cash to be won on their site.

The offline foray didn’t stop for Zapak at corporate gaming events it went a step further by announcing its plans to launch 500+ gaming cafes and was already looking at Russia China and Brazil markets. While all this was happening Jump Games tied up with Manchester United for mobile gaming and while jump games was doing that large portals like indiatimes were tying with ad monetized mobile games provider Hovr. Zapak continued to leverage current affairs and events in its gaming site by launching current affairs related games like the budget.

Around Feb-March-April Zapak forayed into game marketing and game merchandising in a big way for bollywood, IPL and the works. One of its first tie ups was with FXLabs for their PC Game Agni based on Malaika arora. Then the launches continued with games based on cartoon network, Knight riders and their first movie game merchandising deal with Bhoothnath. Zapak still continued its offline foray and this time organised a national gaming tournament. While zapak was at this expansion spree we cornered their COO Rohit Sharma for a WATShow during that time.

As Zapak for diversifying for varied revenue streams newer players were adding gaming as a vertical to their kitty.. Guys at Indyarocks added 900+ games to their social network while Indiagames launched an edutainment section as well as tied up with US based Popcap to distribute their mobile games.

As mid 2008 approached it was clear that Zapak was betting big on merchandising revenues but what wasn’t clear was their strategy for expansion outside India. It was being said that Zapak was looking for acquiring gaming companies in China and US. So while Zapak was still figuring out its strategy Indyarocks which had just launched its gaming channel of 800 odd games on its social network now tied up with FXlabs to create the largest gaming community on Indyarocks with over 5000 games.

As the twenty20 fever of cricket gripped the nation through summer Zapak realized that cricket was the single largest attraction for this country and even their online cricket game was a huge hit! This made them launch a special microsite for cricket games called zapakcricket.com

With all these games being launched the business model and the “how to make money from gaming?” question came into picture. This called for the launch of exclusive gaming ad network vertical by Tyroo and a gaming dedicated ad network by Games2win called inviziads. We also spoke to Shashi Reddy of FXLabs on in game advertising and its future.

Zapak was going strong on it game merchandising plans and tie up with Lovestory 2050 to do their merchandising. The same movie had a 3D game developed as well which was done by Rocking Pixels whom we interviewed on WATGame.

As the year crossed its mid mark we compared zapak’s strategy to that of games2win’s and we also questioned whether social gaming was the future of gaming. While we were asking these questions on the online side of gaming the mobile side of gaming was booming with zapak launching its mobile versions and Hovr tying up with yet another publisher in NDTV Active.

As the year moved more into its second half the slowdown started showing its signs.. Zapak admitted that downloads was not a good business model and hinted that they would be looking at selling gaming discs as a better revenue stream. While zapak was grappling with revenue model issues UTV acquired True games a US based MMORPG gaming company to complement its acquisition of Indiagames which had been done in 2007. We followed up with UTV to know more about this acquisition and their gaming strategy. Soon entertainment companies started waking up to the potential of gaming and production and content houses like Endemol announced their plans to venture into the gaming space.

The final three months of the year saw us talking to Rohit of Zapak again this time to know about his MMORPG and Merchandising strategy. We also did an indepth comparison of International strategies of both games2win and zapak. The year end was also filled with news of international mobile gaming players looking to launch or launching in India. Players like greystrip and gameloft were the first few to make their way to India. Zapak ended the year with another tie up to bolster their merchandising foray i.e. a tie up with Pringoo.

All in all the online and mobile gaming segment saw a lot of action in 2008 in terms of tie ups, new entrants and diversification of business and revenue models as well but the Indian scene still looks like a nascent market which has forced the top online gaming players to look international. In this year that is 2009 I expect gaming to consolidate its position and come up with better monetization tools and ideas for brands as well. Also gaming companies would start focussing on longterm engagement vs shortterm bursts in traffic.

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Thursday, January 1, 2009

WATBlog Update "Exclusive: Hover.in Gets Funding From Media2win" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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"Exclusive: Hover.in Gets Funding From Media2win" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Exclusive: Hover.in Gets Funding From Media2win

You are reading it here first: We have got tipped off from reliable sources that Media2win the agency which is part of the 2win group headed by Alok Kejriwal has invested in Hover.in an in text advertising tool which was showcased in the proto.in event in Jan this year.

The amount of investment is undisclosed though our sources peg the investment at close to a crore and given the early stage of the startup it may be an accurate figure.

Media2win has itself recieved funding from Nexus and Icici venture and is headed by Krishna Kumar and Namrata Balwani and Alok serves on the board of Media2win. We had reviewed Hover in our proto coverage in Jan and you can have look at the same here.

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Wednesday, December 31, 2008

WATBlog Update "Happy New Year! WAT Wishes You A Great 2009!" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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"Happy New Year! WAT Wishes You A Great 2009!" from "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Happy New Year! WAT Wishes You A Great 2009!

As the year 2009 dawns and the year 2008 fades we at WAT want to take this opportunity to thank all our readers for standing by us through thick and thin and through an up and down but nevertheless a very meaningful 2008. We thank you for overlooking our mistakes and for encouraging us at every step and we wish that even through 2009 we would continue to see your support.

WAT Wishes you a very warm, healthy and happy year ahead and hope 2009 brings great pride, love, health and wealth to you and your families!

Cheers! And Lets rock 2009!

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WATBlog Update There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

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Recap 2008: Local Search Space
Exclusive: Reliance ADAG Launches BigOye.com - A Bollywood Centric Entertainment Portal
Recap 2008: Online Travel
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There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India"

Recap 2008: Local Search Space

The local search space came into focus in India way back in 2006 with the funding of guruji.com and then there were a flurry of players that ventured into this space right from onyomo, asklaila, yulop, burrp and a few others.

local search

The year 2008 started with Asklaila launching its local search services in mumbai and guruji going vernacular with its local listings. After the regional foray guruji added mobile capability and also added gujrati as a language which made us question whether going regional would be guruji’s usp?

As the year progressed the International players got into the game with Yahoo launching its own local search for India. Google had already launched local search in August 2007. Following guruji’s footsteps even Asklaila launched a mobile version a couple of months later. A month later even Yulop followed the trend and launched a wap version of their local search. By mid of the year local search players realised the importance of having the BIG G in the good books and a tie up followed between Metromela and Google local search.

With the new players ramping up cities in the local search space certain old players who were in classifieds like sulekha woke up to the possibilities of better organising and expanding in the local search space and they announced expansion in multiple cities and revamped and reorganised their interface. Following the trend even Indiatimes followed suit with launch of mobile search and sms local search although in partnership with onyomo. This wasn’t the only partnership onyomo lapped up in the mobile space as by year ending it also had Rcom in the kitty for local search on reliance mobiles. Looking at this strategy by onyomo asklaila followed suit by tying up with Airtel.

The year ended with guruji launching an interesting finance vertical which was more portal and less search a hint at guruji’s expansion beyond being a local search play.

All in all the local search space saw a shift from online to mobile with either wap launches or mobile tie ups by players. What was also worth noting was the focus on regional content. One has to also point out the vertical nature of some of the local search players like burrp which has been doing a great job in the lifestyle local search space as of now with the launch of their new year calendar in print as well.

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Exclusive: Reliance ADAG Launches BigOye.com - A Bollywood Centric Entertainment Portal

You are reading it here first: Reliance ADAG’s Big Entertainment has launched a Bollywood centric entertainment portal called Bigoye.com. This portal has news, interviews, movie reviews, celebrity blogs, games and movie rentals services all rolled into one. This portal directly competes with Hungama’s Bollywoodhungama.com (previously IndiaFM) and also the latest launch by Percept Knorigin i.e. Cinecurry. Its no surprise that BigOye has tied up with sister concerns like Bigadda, Bigflixs and Zapak for content.

We all know that bollywood is recession proof and the records that Ghajini has set at the box office is proof of that. This makes the online entertainment/bollywood business very lucrative. Till now only a few players like bollywoodhungama and bollywoodsargam were catering to this space (along with a gazzilion blogs ofcourse) and there was Network18’s Buzz18 as well but now with the entry of percept and Big entertainment the big boys of bollywood production have got into the game.

All in all a lot of fierce competition can be expected among these two giants and its very possible that these two online destinations would be leveraged to provide the right traction for their upcoming productions which means leaking of exclusive content via these platforms could be a possibility.

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Recap 2008: Online Travel

The year 2008 can be termed as the year of online travel as this space has seen immense traction all throughout the year. Whether it was launching of discounted travel, expansions, acquisitions, investments, aggregation or even shut down the online travel space has seen it all during this year. It would be an understatement to say that 2008 was an eventful year for online travel. The main players in this space are makemytrip, cleartrip, yatra, travelguru, ixigo and zoomtra and international entrants like expedia and travelocity.

Lets have a look at the sequence of events for the online travel space:

The online travel year started with the news of Railways opening their API. The travel space by 2007 year end has already started seeing some signs of consolidation with Travelguru acquiring desiya. Then by year start 2008 the API news of Indian railways prompted players like makemytrip and cleartrip to launch products around railway search and booking and even railway booking through mobiles. Around the same time we at WATBlog questioned the power and potential of travel 2.0.

While the race for actually having rail ticketing was on another vertical bus ticketing was booming in the early part of 2008 and standalone players like Redbus and ticketvala were booking bus tickets like never before. Besides for bus booking the hotel booking vertical also has started taking shape and some players like travelguru had started focussing on this vertical while sidelining flights. There were also new entrants into the hotel booking space like Lomanika. While OTA’s continued to diversify, reposition and add multiple travel modes to their kitty an aggregator of travel booking in iXiGo.com known as a travel search engine announced its seed investment from a singapore based VC firm.

This wasn’t the only funding deal.. Soon Cleartrip announced the biggest ever funding deal in the Online travel space a whopping 18.5 Million $ and by their own admission they stated that they had raised more money than required. All this money was being justified by travel players by quoting futuristic market size of 6 billion dollars by 2010.

Given this optimism about the online travel market it was evident that there would be entry into the Indian market by International players and so it happened when Expedia one of the worlds largest OTA’s entered the Indian market. The OTA also created tie ups, won awards and looked at going offline while the shift continued towards aggregators.

The first half of 2008 was probably a dream run for the OTA’s but the second half brought the news of layoffs and also of dwindling margins on ticketing which forced them to look at alternative sources of revenue.

By the september end the ticketing revenue via flights had started to dwindle with high oil prices playing spoil sport as a well as the slowdown sinking in globally by october. This led to further diversification in products and services as wel as going offline from OTA’s and the rise of aggregators who were providing cheapest ticket info and quietly eliminating the value that OTA’s provide which frankly was little outside of a ticket. Travel aggregators like Kayak entered the market and even Zoomtra look at expanding by going international and adding value added features through tie ups.

As the year was coming to a close iXiGo came to the forefront with multiple deals and tie ups like the one with NDTV and a big one with Travelguru. Even Cleartrip looked at diversification by powering Hotel search and rail booking on IRCTC site with their API. Cleartrip also launched a corporate travel planning product to try and look at revenues and value beyond ticketing. There was also new launches in the hotel comparison space in hotelly and the repositioning of focus by Thomascook on domestic B2B market by year end. International players like travelocity also launched in India during the year and by year end they were planning a major ad spend on online advertising. So if International players were spending money there were players that ran out of money as well and the year end brought the shutters down on a travel deal aggregator tripmela which went on sale on ebay.

All in all to summarize the year belonged to aggregators like iXiGo and OTA’s that diverisified and diversified fast into verticals like hotels, rail and bus travel. Also by the end of the year travel planning and travel related content came into focus as well and all of this indicated that in 2009 the value beyond the ticket will define the success of travel players in the online space.

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