Gaming industry in India is set to grow by 10x in the next 4 years

Sport as an essential driver of entertainment is a narrative that has been building up over the last 15 years or less. The evolved sports fan, with an adventurous temperament and a native comfort with technology, has taken no time to adopt and propagate Fantasy Sports. The genre has allowed fans to go from being passive viewers to active users – with an opportunity to win in online versions of the game by exercising their understanding of the offline version.

To tap into this growing genre, Play Games24x7 has unveiled its new fantasy sports platform – My11Circle, which offers a completely new way of experiencing fantasy cricket. The all new fantasy sports app is available for download from February 1, 2019.

The platform offers a simple and fun way to experience fantasy sports. Fans can pick and select players from both sides in a match and create a fantasy team of their own. Basis the performance of their selected 11 cricketers, a team owner can win exciting cash prizes. This doubles the fans' engagement and excitement for any cricket match now that every fan can create his/her own fantasy team.

My11Circle currently has international and domestic cricket games to select from. Players can select from practice or cash games post registration. The platform encourages fans to deeply engage with the sport, thereby increasing participation and viewership.

Backed by a strong technical support team, seamless payment gateways, and engaging user interface, Play Games24x7 has launched My11Circle on mobile and desktop, powered by RummyCircle. What makes them stand apart is the ability to provide a customised gameplay experience to each player.

Leveraging their user base of 2 lakh month to month players on RummyCircle, Play Games24x7 offers fans of the game a reprieve by switching between the two high engagement games, keeping up the momentum of gaming experience.

Commenting on the launch, Bhavin Pandya, Co-CEO and Co-Founder, Play Games24x7, said, “Today is a very important day for Play Games24x7 as we launch our first ever fantasy game. We, of course, start with cricket but the goal is to offer multiple games in this format. Our focus on understanding player behavior has enabled us to provide awesome game playing experiences and we shall continue that endeavor by providing awesome fantasy cricket experiences to our players.”

Saroj Panigrahi, Business Head, My11Circle, added here, “Play Games24x7 has a history of successful growth across different product platforms and is excited to introduce the My11Circle fantasy sports app for all Indian cricket lovers. Fantasy sports has great potential in our country and complements Play Games24x7’s existing portfolio perfectly.”

In an interaction with Adgully, Saroj Panigrahi, Business Head, My11Circle, and Aman Satija, Director - Marketing, My11Circle, provide a closer look at the fantasy sports genre and a bird’s eye view of the industry.

What touchpoints is your app available on right now?

Right now, we are available on the Play Store for Android OS users. We will build for iOS users and desktop user as well eventually, but we wanted to get into the majority market, who are Android users and we will slowly build other things around it eventually.

You are seeing engagement from 2 lakh players month to month. Is there any advertiser interest?

We strongly believe not to advertise or not to take that route where you advertise third party content on your website. This is a real gaming website or gaming app where the user comes to get entertained. We strongly believe that by showing them third party ads you are not giving them the right kind of experience.

Our focus has always been to give an awesome game playing experience, be it Rummy or Fantasy Cricket. We don’t want to dilute that at any point of time for advertisements or anything of that sort.

How do you offer the player a customised gaming experience on your app?

We collect a lot of user data that itself speaks a lot about what they want from the product. For example, a person who has lost the first two games is in a different mindset than a person who wins first two games. What we do in real time is basically we gather all this data and then act on it. We send the person who loses the first two games a video tutorial to enhance his skills. For the person who wins the first two games, we send a communication saying why don’t you use this bonus code and play more high value games.

What is the size and need gap in the mobile gaming market?

In the last few years, the Indian gaming market has started to come of age. We believe that this industry is yet to see the hockey curve that we expect will come in the next 4-5 years. The core audience group sits in the age group of 25-45 years. Basically, real money gaming players. If you look at the Indian population, a majority of the population sits under 25 years of age. In the next 25 years, as this population starts earning money, there will be a huge influx of people in the 25-35 age group, which is our core audience. We believe that the industry will easily grow by 10x in the next 4 years.

What are the need gaps that the industry needs to tackle for this space to grow?

In the last 4-5 years, the technological advancements in terms of 4G networks have really helped the mobile gaming industry. You no longer need WiFi to run a decent gaming app, you can run most apps on 4G, especially with telecom operators providing great speeds at very affordable prices. The need gap, which was there in the last 2-3 years, has been filled these past few years. Internet connections are only going to get faster with 5G coming in very soon, so I think all the capability exists and is up for grabs.