IndyaRocks launches casual games, video chat
Ever since its launch, IndyaRocks has continued to amaze me. They innovate and innovate quite frequently. Since their beta launch, they have introduced MoviePlex, SMS-Mobile features, wide screen video etc.
And tomorrow they will be launching their casual gaming section. As per Kalyan, the founder, the initial launch will have 800 casual games. Users will be able to rate, review and share games, with the ability for users to upload their own games. This will enable independent game developers to reach out to IR’s large community. They also plan to launch downloadable and multi-player games in partnership with major game development companies. They have also launched a new video chat feature.
Casual gaming is a flaming hot market - both in the US as well as in India. Zapak is betting big on gaming and recently, FXLabs acquired casual gaming aggregator Knibble for $3 million. So, I wont be surprised if the IndyaRocks gaming section becomes popular in no time.
I asked Kalyan on how they plan to compete with Zapak, which has a huge marketing budget. As per him, they do not intend to compete with Zapak. The gaming section was developed as a request from the member community.
I also asked him about their traffic details and how they are marketing IndyaRocks. In response, Kalyan mentioned that they are getting close to 1.5 - 2 million page views daily and are growing virally. They dont advertise and are pleased with the response generated from blog reviews and press releases.
And all this innovation seems to be paying off. Alexa (yes I know - its unreliable and stuff. thanks to lack of alternatives, we hardly have any choice) shows the traffic has surged over the last few months.
You guys rock !!
February 28th, 2008 at 3:15 am
And also the spam mails they send out saying that we can send free sms ?????
February 28th, 2008 at 9:04 am
hey kenny grow up
just followed the link which led to ur blog
u are the CTO of MOBME -which is also a social networking site
February 28th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Kalyan is definitely committed to indyarocks. As far as “not intending” to compete with Zapak goes, he is definitely taking them on, even if it is unintentional. Introducing casual gaming is the right move.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Santosh,
I agree with what you say — they’ll definitely be taking on zapak with this move. it’d be interesting to see how things shape up - after all, zapak has some serious paisa and muscle behind it.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Pranav,
I really want you to address the issue of paisa/muscle better :-). I’ll make an attempt here. The Arrington Interview you posted earlier said quite clearly - “I look at entrepreneurs as, in a sense, modern-day pirates”.
Wait a minute, Pirates, aren’t they the guys who don’t play by the rules, have fast boats and sneak up right behind you? Indeed, the biggest competitive advantage startups have is stealth, speed and lack of convention. This has allowed for some spectacular successes in the US.
Here in India it appears as if the rules are warped, at first. When BigAdda launched with massive marketing spend to back it up, many felt that the other resource-starved networks were going to get slammed. I have to ask, does the comment on Paisa and muscle reflect the same line of thinking?
I won’t deny that reaching out to the Mass Market the conventional way helps. The real issue is that the solution that a startup puts out needs to be significantly innovative/unique to allow for word of mouth and viral marketing to drive awareness and make a serious impact. Huge Marketing spend is hardly a sustainable edge. Being able to innovate consistently and rapidly definitely is.
Going by the 6mo Alexa statistics it looks like Kalyan might just have hit upon the right initial USP for Indyarocks. I’m also pretty sure that IndyaRocks has been reaching out to the audience through targeted Marketing. Above all - IndyaRocks has also been able to retain that traffic and attention. Could Kalyan be the quintessential pirate in quickly recognizing and moving fast to capitalize on an important trend? Having said that, I understand that IndyaRocks has a lot of catching up to do.
I guess my point is that we could all be a lot more encouraging and optimistic. Budding Entrepreneurs should not have to fear a big behemoth stepping in. Instead they should actively seek out strong defenses in USP’s and IP. We need to encourage that line of thinking and I’d always look forward to hearing more on such efforts on startup dunia.
Thank you for the reply, I got to say that your blog is shaping up pretty well.
- Santosh
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm
The real issue is that the solution that a startup puts out needs to be significantly innovative/unique to allow for word of mouth and viral marketing to drive awareness and make a serious impact. Huge Marketing spend is hardly a sustainable edge. Being able to innovate consistently and rapidly definitely is.
Santosh, I agree 100 % - no questions asked.
However, I think you missed the point.
Let me try to explain a bit better - say the online Indian population is about 30 million users. Say that by viral marketing and word-of-mouth, IndyaRocks gets 90-100% of the market share. At the same time, there’s a huge chunk of the Indian population, which is not yet online. The TV-movie going audience. To bring this audience online, you will have to resort to a conventional marketing medium, which very few startups would be able to afford.
Also, keep in mind that out of the currently online Indian population, the average joe online Indian user is not as savvy as you and me. We’d be able to easily say which is a better product - BigAdda or IndyaRocks. Others may not be able to tell or worse, may not care.
A lot of the common users are still greatly influenced by bollywood, cricket etc..A marketing gimmick involving bollywood / cricket celebrities may not attract users like you or me, but it may attract a lot of non-tech-savvy users. And folks like you and me are the minority here.
so, when I talk about the muscle-paisa factor for bigadda-zapak, I imply that they have the means to reach out to the average joe user as compared to small startups.
Contentsutra had an interesting post on this a few weeks back:
http://www.contentsutra.com/entry/419-tv-ad-time-for-web-telco-isp-and-handset-manufacturers/
you can view this as both - a good or a bad trend. A good trend because all these portals are getting the TV-movie audience online, in other words, introducing them to the online world.
A bad trend because, it’d be difficult for startups and small players to match up to these tactics
March 4th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
pranav/santosh
its a very interesting discussion that u have started ,after reading about indyarocks and your comments i thought i should add my views to this interesting topic-should web 2.0 companies market in traditional media.
well lets start off with some successful internet companies in the world
goggle,youtube, craigs list,myspace,facebook etc have never ever advertised any where in traditional media nor did they spend any mad money on ads till date.Its only India we are seeing huge ad spends by web2.o companies and social networking sites.during the dot com bust only the comapneies which relied on ads to market them selves have bitten the dust.despite seeing this many companies in India are following the same route and iam pretty sure that they too will suffer the same fate.
even orkut for that matter grew virally even in India and never ever did any traditional media ads .
when some product/service is supposed to grow virally ,it has to grow virally and not any other way,even a rupee spent other wise is nothing but waste of money.orkut took 3 yrs to gain decent traction even in India and now look where it is,i dont believe it is just becuase it is a google company or because they spent any huge money on ads-i feel it was because it had hit the right cord at the right time.
My strong feeling is that indyarocks should never ever get in to the game of traditional marketing the way others are doing,but rather grow the way it is growing now,because i would like to see at least one Indian start up do the right thing in the right way.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:23 am
Hi Pranav,
“you can view this as both - a good or a bad trend. A good trend because all these portals are getting the TV-movie audience online, in other words, introducing them to the online world. A bad trend because, it’d be difficult for startups and small players to match up to these tactics”
Let me see if I understand the point, as your saying that I missed it ;-). You are saying (and I para-phrase), that it is difficult for a startup to match up to mass-market reach that the bigger players can perform. They bring the first-time users online. However, what are they doing to retain that same first-time user? Eventually, he will find out about alternative B which is packaged and marketed differently.
Again, I agree with you, yes 100% - the first-time user will definitely go to the big player who advertises like crazy. However, my argument is that this is *not* a bad thing. I would also like to support the comment from Naren, web2.0 products are designed to grow virally - so don’t have to press the panic button when your competitor goes mass-market. Focus on the product and the market fit.
Indyarocks will continue to grow organically, if they sustain the current growth trend (on Alexa) I can see them catching up within 6 months. In other words, bigAdda’s huge marketing spend advantage has been negated in a span of 9 - 12 months. Not bad for a startup. However, catching up to orkut is a whole different ball game.
I am going out on a limb here and making several weak assumptions. For example, BigAdda’s growth (on Alexa) remains linear for a while. Also, they don’t do anything directly to innovate for their own product and Kalyan manages to continue to innovate and maintain his USP. Based on these assumptions, I know our arguments are a lot closer to aligning.
Also, as someone who is in the web space, I know that I am already biased towards startups.
The real focal point for startup sustainability, is the health of the Internet eco-system in India. This is what could make the difference between a startup success story and an also ran. I would really like StartupDunia to consider that, perhaps I am requesting you to highlight it in its own post (I promise you I said please first ;-)).
The serious sustainable advantage that bigAdda has over any other startup are the deep pockets of big daddy Reliance which allows it to keep chugging along. Rajesh Sawhney (CEO, RE) said it best “Patient Capital”. That capital gives them to time to figure out what is working and what isn’t.
I have plenty of research on the AdSpends and E-commerce in the US and in India, while we all are aware of the differences in the ad spends in the two countries. I’d like to highlight that the difference is well over a multiple of 100x. In other words, for a startup starting out here in India, the same effort will yield very little in cash in the early stages. Whereas in the US, the same effort could yield $300k a month, which is considered a reasonable target to meet within 12 mos conservatively.
As Ram Charan (chief advisor to companies like GE) says it doesn’t matter if you are running the biggest business in the world or a shoe shop round the corner - your businesses ability to stay alive is directly correlated to its ability to generate cash. Cash flows are the oxygen supply. So, if your unable to raise funds the PE way - you are always going to be one step closer to hitting a wall than your competitor who is funded (or backed).
In brief, the best advice an Entrepreneur like me can get is to first learn how to raise money. The other good advice is to learn how to spend it wisely to allow my product to get the same runway the bigger guys have. Third good advice is to delay -serious- mass marketing spend until and unless I am sure that my USP is sharp enough to retain a significant percentage of eyeballs that such a marketing campaign will generate.
Having said that, I am pretty sure that BigAdda is also considering a similar Roadmap (no, this is not an informed opinion). They are probably hunkered down right now trying to figure out what is selling and what isn’t and how they can do more of the former. That definitely makes them a formidable competitor. However, if other Entreprenuers pick up on the same idea and allow themselves to get that same runway in place the paisa/muscle edge is narrowed allowing for the innovation angle to make a bigger impact.
March 13th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Wonderful post
Zapak has been expanding a lot, lately.
I was a total addict at Indiagames until Zapak came.
The range and quality of games available at Zapak is just mindblowing.And to top it all, they now support it with offline events like Gameplexes.
What I discoverd was that you can even embed their games as widgets in your blog. I tested one.
Here is the link
Although I have not yet started utilizing the full potential, I can see this adding a lot of value to gaming bloggers.
Would like to see your comments about the same on my blog.
May 4th, 2008 at 5:36 am
How many social networking sites have come and gone… i have lost track of the number of social netwrking sites i am a member of.. every now and then a friend sends an invitation to join a new site evry week. how much goyaar would be able to capture the market is still unknown. what can be their strategy, targetting indians.. well I have heard tht before. i hope atleast one site makes it big. fropper currently has been doing a lot of offline publicity tht has helped it a lot. i hope goyaar also wont mind doing the same… lots of competition these sites have to find a way to beat it.. by providing something innovative.
Regards,
deepa
July 16th, 2008 at 10:39 am
gr8 website