Tag: Paavan Nanda

gaming

WinZO partners with global gaming giant Gameloft; emerges as a new distribution avenue for game developers

Nov 29, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Paavan Nanda, #the CEO & co-founder of WinZO

Mumbai– India’s largest social gaming platform, WinZO has partnered with the France based global gaming giant, Gameloft to help them catalyse their reach and revenue in Indian vernacular markets. Gameloft is a global market leader in casual gaming and has over 150 massively popular titles, such as Asphalt 9 and other action & racing games, garnering over 1.2 billion downloads worldwide. Understanding the merit in increasing vernacular reach, Gameloft will leverage WinZO’s 65 million+ user base to improve monetization in India. Gameloft in order to further distribute to the deeper parts of the country will leverage WinZO’s users, based in India’s tier 2 to tier 5 markets, 80% of whom are consuming the games in non-English languages.

India accounts for 12% of downloads, translating into approx. 150 million users, but accrues only a meagre 0.6% of their global revenue share making it a high potential market and an underutilised one. For Gameloft, this is a challenge that WinZO is strategically positioned to help solve and aid. As a part of this collaboration, WinZO will also be offering it’s platform’s capabilities such as streaming, gaming formats, and WinZO Store to drive Asphalt 9’s revenue. This serves as an apt opportunity for Gameloft to better monetise the vast engagement coming from the region.

Apart from hosting over 80 games in 12 vernacular languages and multiple formats, WinZO facilitates more than 2.5 billion micro-transactions per month. The platform also has an in-app marketplace, WinZO Store, that facilitates the sale of in-app currencies at the lowest commissions compared to any conventional app stores such as Google Play Store, Apple Play Store amongst others. WinZO has quickly emerged as a new avenue of distribution for game developers who have been concerned about the hefty commissions charged by other dominant app stores. Over 300 game developers who have integrated their games on WinZO have benefitted from WinZO’s unique and innovative integration methodology that promises a 100X revenue when compared to alternative revenue sources.

This collaboration will also see WinZO deploy its strong influencer base to increase user awareness and penetration regarding Gameloft’s global titles. Mobilization of this captive regional influencer base will create localized content around these titles, which would potentially garner 1 Billion + impressions. Content specific to these titles will be live streamed in 12+ languages with an eventual target to drive sales and run live deals.

Commenting on the new association, Paavan Nanda, the CEO & co-founder of WinZO said, “WinZO is glad to have partnered with yet another world-class publisher Gameloft to help them leverage our strong market presence and its deep understanding. More than 60% of our 65 million+ user base are premium paying users which makes us well positioned to help big global companies to increase their presence in India’s booming vernacular gaming market. Today, India is at the forefront of the global gaming scenario and considering that we are at the cusp of this opportunity we believe we can ably leverage our tech and market capabilities to tap this boom and make it noticeable on the global grid.”

This partnership comes ahead of WinZO’s recent partnership with another France based casual gaming major- Voodoo to bring two of their most popular titles Crowd City and Dune on WinZO. WinZO is known for its innovative micro-transaction model which is a proven success in developing markets like India where the propensity to spend over gaming is considerably low. WinZO constantly works towards development of Indian Gaming Ecosystem towards which they recently announced the launch of The Gaming Lab initiative in collaboration with marquee investor Kalaari Capital, asides its standalone Game Developer Fund-III of $20 million.

Business World, News

WinZO gives complete exit to Hike through a $12MM share buyback

May 3, 2021 by Rekha Nair 0 Comments #Paavan Nanda, #the Co-Founder of WinZO

New Delhi: WinZO, India’s largest vernacular social gaming platform, has given a complete exit to its early investor Hike with four-fold returns on their investment in May 2019. This comes after the Series B funded gaming start-up raised additional $13 million capital from its existing investors-Stephan Pagliuca, Makers Fund, and Courtside Venture. It is noteworthy that these investors had led the $18 Million Series B fund raise for WinZO in September 2020, taking the total fund raise tally for the three-year-old startup to $38MM.

This exit transaction, which has received a nod from the Ministry of corporate affairs (MCA), saw WinZO buy back Hike’s share for $12 million, making it one of the largest buy back transactions by an early-stage start-up in the Indian start-up ecosystem. Hike had earlier participated in the $5 Million Series-A funding in WinZO back in 2019 and has received 4X returns within a span of 18 months.

Earlier this year, Hike had announced shutting down its primary messaging business and launched a conflicting gaming app Rush, similar to WinZO. Post Series B in Sep’20, WinZO had reportedly waived off the non-compete for Hike alongside withdrawing access to the board and the Company.

Paavan Nanda, the Co-Founder of WinZO said, “That’s correct. Hike’s been given a complete exit from WinZO. As Founders, we are super chuffed and humbled to have a Board that is extremely bullish, and completely aligned with the audacious goals we have set for ourselves. They had immensely supported the Company through the process.”

Singapore based global interactive entertainment investor Makers Fund, New York based Courtside ventures and Stephan Pagliuca who is the co-chair of Bain Capital, co-owner of NBA team Boston Celtics and an early investor in gaming major, Epic Games made their first investment in India last year through WinZO’s $18 million series B fund raise. An additional infusion of $13 million within a short span of just six months from the Series B investors highlights their confidence and faith in the founders’ vision for the company and the strength of the business.

WinZO which is a pioneer in the fast-growing social gaming industry in India saw unprecedented growth over the last one year during the ongoing COVID pandemic. It is widely regarded for its innovative models to empower its stakeholders through democratizing entrepreneurship among the game developers, content creators and content translators. This is testament to the company’s vision aligned to the Prime Minister’s AtmaNirbhar bharat initiative. WinZO has also announced a game developer fund – II of a $5 million corpus post its series B fund raise. It has also announced initiatives to groom the aspiring content creators through structured training programs.

 

Business World

WinZO announces Game Developer Fund II of $5 Million, eyeing to uplift Indian Game Developer Ecosystem

Nov 7, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Bhoos Entertainment, #Fortnite, #Game Developer Fund II, #Indian Game Developer, #Mr. Ranjan Shrestha, #Paavan Nanda, #Steve Pagliuca, #WinZO

WinZO, India’s largest vernacular social gaming platform, announces a $5MM (Rs.37.50 Crore) fund to uplift the Indian Game Developer ecosystem. This news comes after the startup announced its Series-B of $18 Million led by global interactive entertainment fund Makers Fund based in Singapore, New York-based Courtside Venture, and Steve Pagliuca, the Co-Chairman of Bain Capital and investor in Epic Games – developers of the massively popular game, Fortnite.

The company had earlier announced Fund I of $1.5 million in July 2019. In response, it received 250+ applications from large and small developers and ended up deploying the capital across 9 teams. It onboarded all those projects on WinZO’s platform.

Given the way Indian Gaming engagement has gone through the roof on the back of COVID19 and ban of Chinese Apps such as PUBG, Tiktok, company has increased its allocation amount to $5MM in order to have a strong impact on boosting the Indian Gaming Ecosystem. This move is in line with Prime Minister’s Atmanirbharta mission wherein the company is scouting to fund projects in interactive entertainment space. Applications are open till December 31, 2020.

Announcing the fund, Paavan Nanda, Co-founder, WinZO Games, said: We feel excited to announce the launch of Game Developer Fund II. Through this initiative, we are committed to uplift the Indian Gaming Ecosystem which is at the cusp of disruption. There is infinite talent and creativity and we would like to offer everything else that’s required for a team to create a dent in this space and create gaming products for the entertainment-starved Bharat.

We are not just focusing on Gaming projects but also equally keen to evaluate Game Ops, Streaming, Esports, etc related proposals. We also ensure a sustainable revenue stream by providing a ready-made market for the selected projects by introducing them to our 25 million+ registered user base.

The platform currently offers its users 70+ skill-based games on its android app in 12 regional languages. WinZO received over 250+ applications for the previous fund, of which it has already onboarded 10+ games. These games were from across genres including casual games, board games, battle royales, arcade games etc.

The mission for WinZO is to onboard 500+ new exciting games for its users and bring the best of entertainment for the mobile-first audience.

Mr. Ranjan Shrestha, of Bhoos Entertainment, who runs a four-membered game studio and was one of the beneficiaries of WinZO’s developer’s fund said: “We had multiple games which were not doing so well on play store and other stores in terms of revenue generation.

However, after the partnership and integration of those games on WinZO, we have received huge traction from the same games, thanks to the specialization of WinZO in promotion and marketing. Algorithms to push the content to the relevant audience helped drive the engagement further. We have seen 10x more returns than any other sources and we do not need to worry about the monetization and distribution at all. Our sole focus is to build high-quality games.”