WinZO, vernacular social gaming platform, backed by Kalaari Capital and Hike has partnered with Titan Capital backed Rein Games and Kalaari backed Deftouch to bring multiplayer real-time pool and multiplayer cricket to the 20MM registered users of Bharat. This comes in shortly after WinZO’s recent announcement of tie-up with Tecent to make PUBG tournaments available in 12 languages.
In the last few months, WinZO has partnered with 50+ indie-developers and global gaming studios such as Garena (for FreeFire), Nazara Technologies to host their games on its platform and solve for the monetisation for the vernacular audience through its micro-transaction backed model. Being vernacular has helped WinZO spread its reach in the deeper roots of Bharat (Tier 2-5) and garner 10X growth within 12 months – its noteworthy that WinZO is the only vernacular gaming platform in the country with 12 languages made available.
Rein Games is a Noida based startup backed by Dr Ranjan Pai’s MEMG and Titan Capital established in 2018 is founded by four former Octro colleagues. WinZO has partnered with Rein games for the game of Pool, inspired by their product, R8 Ball Pool Pro which is a full-featured real time multiplayer pool game. The complex dynamics and physics used to develop WinZO Pool makes the game extremely realistic and engaging for the users. This game, like all others on WinZO, has features which allow users to invite and play the game with their friends in private mode, making it India’s first ever private real- time pool experience. Within one week of the launch of Pool on its platform, WinZO is observing an average time spent of 50-60 minutes on the game.
Deftouch Interactive Art, on the other hand, is the creator of Cricket Dangal. A Bangalore based venture, is also backed by Kalaari. Deftouch was the official gaming partner of RCB for IPL in 2017 in the prototype stage itself. WinZO has partnered with Deftouch to monetise their biggest IP, All Star Cricket. All Star Cricket is one of the most loved multiplayer cricket games on WinZO with an average time spent of 40-45 minutes, consumed in Hindi by 40 per cent of users. What is unique about this game is that this is multiplayer- now while you bat, your friend would be bowling.
Through WinZO’s tech infra, these games have been especially optimised to operate in areas where the internet speeds are not reliable and stable. In recent times and during this COVID pandemic, owing to large internet demands, many areas are facing high fluctuations in the internet connectivity and speed. This leads to a suboptimal experience for the users especially gamers. Hence, these games have been developed to circumvent these hindrances and provide the greatest gaming experience to all WinZO users across Bharat.
“Gaming > Music + Movies, globally. We are thrilled to partner with the best teams to disrupt game monetisation and to bring realtime social gaming experience to Bharat – truly the new age way of hanging out together. With WinZO’s Game Developer Console, it’s easier to partner with transparency and co-build the gaming ecosystem with game developers of the country. GDC gives the direct access of WinZO’s 100 per cent paying players to these developers/studios to monetise their games to their full potential on our platform. The entire gaming ecosystem is coming together to solve for the entertainment of Bharat in a sustainable fashion.” says WinZO co-founder Saumya Singh Rathore.
Rein Games founder Vaibhav Gupta, said “Our decision to collaborate with WinZO was a very intuitive one as we see a huge potential in this partnership. Not only shall the users of WinZO be able to enjoy the most authentic Pool experience out there, but we will also be able to cater to a larger audience, especially non-metro, which is WinZO’ s stronghold in a sense and provide them with great user experience. What is also incredible about this partnership is the value alignment between the two organisations about customer focus and we are extremely sure that this partnership will create great value for both the organisations”
WinZO had earmarked $1.5 MM fund to support content production in the country- as a part of ‘Build for Bharat’ initiative of the venture. Through this fund, WinZO encouraged the developers to create world class games with an assured capital and revenue stream. WinZO clocks 200 million microtransactions per month with more than 1.5 million bank accounts linked to the platform, 20 per cent of these users are making their first-ever media and entertainment payment on the platform.