Reach: 27.4%

Total Unique Visitors: 8,295,000

Average minutes per visitor: 45.4

Average visits per visitor: 4.3

India ranks lowest in terms of popularity of online gaming websites in the APAC region. Additionally the ‘average visits per visitor’ metric also seems to indicate that number of “repeat visitors” is incredibly low as compared other APAC countries.

via release

Comments

• October 16, 2008, animesh commented: Hmm.. I thought the Indian Gaming Industry was booming. this report certainly gives you a food for thought:)
• October 20, 2008, pranav commented: It may be booming -- but still is pretty small as compared to other APAC countries..
• November 10, 2008, Rama commented: I think the reason for the lower rates in India is a good chunk of the online users are users from work and gaming from work is not practical. Other Internet areas of course benefit as its not as difficult to browse or use from work.

Nunook would be the latest buzz in the Indian gaming market. They are a cool, new social network for casual Indian gamers. You can play games without signing up on the site, but the point system on Nunook is tightly integrated into the other aspects of the site.

Each time you play a game, you earn points. This in turn, increases your ‘achievement level’ on the site. The higher the level, the more access you get to exclusive content on the site. Points not only get you access to exclusive content, they also enable you to change avatars, and buy collectibles - aka virtual goods. In other words, they earn you bragging rights. Simply put, points are the currency on Nunook.

Of course, you have the social network too. Add friends, invite friends, form teams and play games as a team. As a team, you can also participate in contests and win prizes.

All in all, I think Nunook is awesome. A well designed niche social network with a great level of engagement for the end user. Its great to see such cool sites finally emerging for the Indian audience.

Give it a spin and let me know your thoughts.

• Trine Game Studios - adding the Indian flavor
• Sunoh.fm launches Orkut app, Nunook launches widgets
• Guitarati launches online Antakshari like game

Comments

• March 2, 2008, amit commented: I agree with you . Infact this is a much better way to build a social network than throwing up blank pages and asking users to signup. But i feel number of games are less on the website. They need to signup with other publishers to increase their game inventory.
• March 2, 2008, sagar commented: Yes, the site seems to be promising. Nice to see more people are joining in the gaming race. But as far as the points/Scoring is concerned I think Egglad (http://www.egglad.com) is the first one to implement this.
• March 3, 2008, pranav commented: @amit, yes...they need to build their game inventory. But, since they have just gone into beta, I hope it will change when they launch publicly. @sagar, egglad doesnt seem to be targeted towards indian gamers specifically.

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 !!

• India Gaming market: Nunook, an awesome, Indian social gaming network
• IndyaRocks launches Eros Entertainment channel, integrates Google Maps
• Trine Game Studios - adding the Indian flavor

Comments

• February 28, 2008, Kenney commented: And also the spam mails they send out saying that we can send free sms ?????
• February 28, 2008, madhu commented: 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 28, 2008, Santosh commented: 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 29, 2008, pranav commented: 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 1, 2008, Santosh commented: 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 3, 2008, pranav commented: 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 4, 2008, Naren commented: 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 6, 2008, Santosh commented: 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 13, 2008, Ashi Kacheria commented: 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. :D
• May 4, 2008, deepa commented: 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 16, 2008, gurgaon commented: gr8 website
• September 28, 2008, parthiv commented: its nice

Its now reported that the rumor is bogus and is SOE has denied any such deal.

The ET story has since been taken down.  Way to go ET !!

• HT Media acquires DesiMartini - a few thoughts
• Reliance ADAG in talks to buy out Seventymm ?
• Reliance Communications plans largest wireless network in the world

via GameGuru 

• IndyaRocks launches casual games, video chat
• India Gaming market: Nunook, an awesome, Indian social gaming network
• India Gaming companies want industry status

As I’m scrolling down, I notice the following:

Since gaming does not fall under the preview of any one single ministry, the committee will approach the IT, Telecom and sports ministry with the proposal.

Gaming company to approach the sports ministry of India ? Ok..by now, the story has my undivided attention. So, as I continue reading, I notice the below:

Some of the demands includes tax benefits for the gamers, college admission preferences among others.

And then comes the jewel in the crown:

CII and Indiagames wants that gaming should be considered as a sport and players involved should be treated as sportsmen.

Gamers should be treated as sportsmen ? Are you friggin’  kidding me ?

What’s next ? Proposal to nominate a gamer for the Arjuna award ?

• India Gaming market: Nunook, an awesome, Indian social gaming network
• IndyaRocks launches casual games, video chat
• Bogus: Zapak buys Sony Online Entertainment

Comments

• September 17, 2007, sanjay commented: two sides to the story, probably similar to ITeS/BPO getting separated out from the bigbrothers IT giving them special attention and therefore sops. However, in the same vein the animation companies can also claim to be separate(are they already?)since they too might be feeling stretched between entertainment and IT industry. Rgds Sanjay
• October 7, 2007, hari commented: i want work in a gaming company what would you expect fom me
• October 26, 2007, MindFreak commented: NASSCOM is organizing this Gaming and Animation event in Mumbai. This in a way will be a boost for the gaming industry. Any one attneding this event?

But dont take my word for it. Take a look below at some of the screenshots of the game.

The game is currently in production and as per Trine co-founder Sangam Gupta, they will take their time to release a high quality game.

Trine also has some other upcoming games for the Indian market - ‘Streets of Mumbai’ (car racing based on Mumbai city streets), ‘Wings over Kargil’ (a third person airplane combat shooter game based on the 1971 Indo-Pak war).

I think games with such Indian flavor will definitely appeal to the Indian gaming audience. Hopefully, we get to play these awesome looking games sometime soon.

The studio is founded by Somil Gupta and Sangam Gupta and they have had stints at EA etc. The company is currently bootstrapped.

• India Gaming market: Nunook, an awesome, Indian social gaming network
• IndyaRocks launches casual games, video chat
• India Gaming companies want industry status

Comments

• October 6, 2007, Alpa commented: Want to be make games
• November 21, 2007, vishal vasava commented: We game developers have been waiting for such initiatives. All the best.
• June 2, 2008, Sameer Panda commented: I am really interested to get into the Gaming industry, Since i am a person who can play lots of games for long hours, i would suggest you guys to make some games on Crime Serial Bom Blast killer. We need to find out the Bomb in the city and despose it, please let me know your feedback.

And now it seems that Indian portals are hit by the 3D avatar and virtual world bug. In a story on FE, Rediff and Zapak admit that they are toying with the idea and hope to announce something in the next couple of months. Zapak.com plans to come out with a range of avatars in about two months after extensive testing in internet cafes and with about 50 games. “Avatars are the stickiest of applications and we estimate avatars will help us grow by 30-35%,” says Rohit Sharma, COO Zapak.com.

Rediff is already experimenting with 3D avatars on their beta gaming site.

Hmm..Only 2 million broadband subscribers in our country - Dont you think its a bit too early to experiment with 3D virtual worlds ?

On a side note, if you find 3D virtual worlds and avatars interesting, check out the open source apps - Blender and OpenCroquet. You can get a technical and developer’s perspective into what goes behind creating all those jazzy 3D avatars and stuff. Pretty amazing stuff.

Read entire story at FE

FXLabs is currently working on Dhoom 2 for Yash Raj Films. Isnt it a bit late for a Dhoom 2 video game ?
more here.

Comments

• June 7, 2007, Gaurav Sharma - A Weird Soul » Blog Archive » Gaming consoles in India may actually work commented: [...] I was reading about the PC Gaming on Starupdunia. I don’t really agree with the statement: Gaming consoles and games are cost prohibitive in the Indian market. [...]

Here’s an interesting piece in the story:

“Most of the games revolve around popular Indian countryside scenes such as cock fighting, animal husbandry and hunting.”

Cock fighting !!!! Whoa — now thats localizing games for the Indian audience .

via Hindu

Go ahead and sign up for their beta here.

Ok - not much news here.

But I just found the irony pretty amusing.

Comments

• May 8, 2007, Mani commented: Hi Pranav, That's an irony indeed. I'd urge that though "seemingly" silly - you should post such news around. For someone who's hearing it for the first time, it definitely NEWS. You see.. Cheers! Mani
• May 8, 2007, pranav commented: Mani, point taken ;-)

In and earlier interview, Rajesh Sawhney, Head Reliance Entertainment, describes how online gaming industry in India is still in its nascent stage and the monetization is sub-par as compared to international standards. He also talks about the strategy for Zapak going forward - localization of games for the Indian market. For example, he mentions about a yet to be launched game revolving around Bipasha Basu.

So is online gaming the next big thing in India ? As per a recent IAMAI report, the online gaming industry industry is pegged at 21 crores. As per this report, it is expected to reach an estimated 200$ million by 2010. Heck, even big timers like EA are mulling over a local acquisition.

Hmm..Ok. So the online gaming industry in India is in for some exciting times ahead. Point taken - I’m sold.

But that leads me to wonder - is the Indian online gaming industry really worth 21 crores today ?

Note that the 21 crores figure includes only online gaming - defined as follows by IAMAI:

“Gaming that requires the use of a PC and internet connectivity, either played online or downloaded and played online later, capable of supporting either single or multiple players, where the player(s) is in India”

As per the IAMAI report, the revenue from the online gaming industry comes from three main sources:

1) Advertising - includes Advergames (deep advertiser integration within game), in game placements and on-site advertising. Based on the current state of the gaming industry, it is safe to assume that on-site advertising forms the bulk of this category of revenue

2) Subscriptions - monthly subscriptions for MMORPG’s like Sify’s A3 and monthly subscriptions for Games on Demand (IndiaGames)

3) Organized Cyber Cafe - revenue accruing to Reliance and Sify from online gaming activities at Web Worlds and Game Dromes

It is this 3rd revenue source that doesnt fit too well with me. You may think that my reasoning is flawed but none the less, I dont think that the revenue generated from the usage of GameDromes and Web Worlds should be added into the total market size.

The way I see it - GameDromes and Web Worlds are mere infrastructure enablers. The sole reason they’re thriving is because of the miserable broadband penetration. If broadband becomes common place, the usage of GameDromes and Web Worlds would trickle down - and so would the revenues. If one were to include in the revenues brought in from GameDromes and Web Worlds, why not include the revenues contributed by Sify and Reliance broadband as well ? Its highly probable that a fair number of Sify & Reliance broadband customers would be gamers too. Coincidentally, the organized cyber cafe is also the biggest revenue contributor (58%) to the entire pie.

Additionally, the report estimates that 11% of the revenue was from advertising. That’s about Rs 2 crores from on-site advertising (as stated earlier, I’m going to discount advergames and in-game placement).

2 crores ?

Are there any additional gaming portals that I missed out ? Zapak launched 2nd half last year, Games2Win mid 2005. IndiaGames revenue stream is based on subscription and so is Sify A3’s. So, the revenue for the only two known gaming portals is 2 crores ? Please enlighten me if there are other Indian gaming portals I’ve missed out. If I havent, I would be interested to know how IAMAI came up with this figure. To me, it seems to be a very high figure considering both of these portals are still relatively new.

What do you have to say ? I’d like to hear from you if you find my reasoning above incorrect.

Comments

• April 25, 2007, HatoriHanso commented: Hey, I'm with you on your skepticism about the numbers.. 21 crores.. Where? Whom? Couple of things though - Online Gaming companies in India - Level Up Games.. They've been around for a while now and probably have the largest MMOG community around. Though I don't know how successful they've been in monitizing the whole thing. Organized Cafes- The number would probably be much higher if un-organized cafes are counted.. but.. whatever.. Yeh, about org. cafes.. and this is where I believe you're quite wrong Online gaming isn't necessarily like surfing or watching TV. It's more like a Sport. People like playing or watching sports with other people.. and thats where cyber cafes', especially Organized Chains really have the growth potential. You must look at it differently. Online Gaming is a different form of media altogether and comes with it's own quirks (varying from culture to culture) Asian cultures have shown an affinity to the Cafe Model. Check out the scene in China, the Philippines, Malaysia etc.; gaming cafe's are the locations of choice. Small homes and large families are common across all these markets..and if you're in India, add high PC costs to the list too. For the same reasons, Cafe's aren't just enablers. They're way more than just infrastructure, just like Coffee shops are to Coffee sale. Both channels, yet so much more. Anyway.. great article. -HH
• April 25, 2007, pranav commented: Hatori, I dont think the cafe model has anything to do with Indian culture (I'll stick to indian market since I am not well informed about China and the filipino market). I still believe the only reason the cafes thrive is because of (1) PCs are still expensive (2) Broadband woes Give me one good reason why people would use cafes if the above two obstacles are overcome. But this issue aside, do you think its fair game to include the revenues from organized cafes into the online gaming market size ? Btw - To this date my laptop wallpaper is set to HatoriHanzo's sword :-)
• June 6, 2007, PC Gaming is the way to go in India « Startup Dunia - Indian startups and Entrepreneurship commented: [...] FXLabs CEO Tony Garcia thinks that PC gaming is the way to go in India. Gaming consoles and games are cost prohibitive in the Indian market. He feels that gaming in India is largely untapped and holds a lot of potential. Although he agrees that there no good estimate of the market and size of the Indian gaming scene. (IAMAI pegs Indian gaming at Rs 21 crore, but I have my own doubts). [...]

The company would invest $5 million in the facility. “In the next two years, we will be investing $20 million more. By second quarter next year, it would have 1,000 people,” Mr Prakash Ahuja, Chief Executive Officer of Gameshashtra Inc, said.

via The Hindu

via Economic Times.