 "Making mobile gaming pay")
“Mobile entertainment is playing a big role in the adoption of mobile internet in India. We see gaming as another form of entertainment that's going to contribute towards this growth, one that is bite-sized, low cost and optimised for a mobile-first market like India,” said Kavin Mittal, BSB’s head and son of Bharti Airtel founder Sunil Mittal.
BSB’s first effort was the development and launch of messenger app Hike around a year before. Now, BSB’s games will hope to leverage Hike’s five to 10 million users for its free games. Tiny Mogul has released ‘Shiva,’ loosely based on the Hindu god, where the constantly running character kills his enemies with a variety of weapons, and Song Quest, a Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC)-influenced quiz game that uses songs to ask music-related questions from Hindi movies, Tamil movies and Western bands. You can challenge your friends, compete with them for a high score and even buy some of the songs or albums with your winnings.
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Blunted appetites
This is a bold gambit in a country where mobile gaming and its development haven’t exactly sizzled. A report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and consultancy KPMG shows mobile gaming makes up just Rs 5,700 crore of the Rs 15,000-crore gaming industry (the rest divvied between consoles and personal computers). However, thanks to the insatiable Indian appetite for smartphones, whose sales grew 129 per cent over a year in the June quarter, annual revenue is expected to leap to Rs 18,000 crore by 2017.
To fully appreciate mobile gaming’s potential and the route BSB is taking, one could glance at neighbouring China. There, rival messaging app WeChat, owned by Chinese firm Tencent (which in turn is 30 per cent owned by Naspers, the South African Media Group), has begun to make substantial money by flogging its games to 300 million users using its ‘freemium’ model. Its games are free but ‘in-app’ purchases of widgets which boost one’s abilities (called ‘power-ups’) are the real magic potions for gaming companies and help drive revenue.
WeChat’s games have turned out to be huge business and an important driver for Tencent’s shares. Barclay’s estimates are that a little over 70 per cent of WeChat’s estimated 2014 revenue of around $480 million will come from its mobile games, helping boost its parent’s shares by 48 per cent and Tencent’s market capitalisation to $88 billion. Remarkable, as Tencent made no money from gaming last year.
While those are mouth-watering numbers, questions continue to haunt the mobile gaming market in India. In fact, shackled by the bleak economic prospects of the industry here, many developers have either gone out of business or fled to foreign shores. Alok Kejriwal, one of the pioneers of Indian gaming, decided to move his games2win outfit from Mumbai to San Francisco. Once there, one of his games, ‘Parking Frenzy’ became wildly successful, garnering 12 million downloads worldwide and the number one spot on the US iTunes App store. “We’re waiting for the Sholay moment for games in India,” says Kejriwal, referring to the iconic Indian film that transformed the industry in India.
Gaming hurdles
That moment might be a while in coming. “Monetising is still a challenge in India” says Jehil Thakkar, KPMG’s head of media and entertainment in India. It remains the key reason pushing developers like Kejriwal to other lands. “Here, games are limited by telecom infrastructure. Unless games reside on phones, connectivity networks don’t do a good job supporting it,” he adds.
If that isn’t bad enough, paid apps don’t command any meaningful advertisement and the lack of credit card growth means people aren’t easily able to buy those power-ups that fuel the revenues of gaming companies. Of course, in-app purchases can be catalysed by telecom companies which act as payment gateways today. However, being gatekeepers has also allowed them to squeeze content producers for 70 per cent of a product’s proceeds. Some carriers have begun reducing that slice to 50 per cent but they aren’t really accessible by the average-sized gaming company, which tends to be small.
Here, BSB has a huge advantage. After all, they are in the same family as the largest telecom operator in India, Airtel. Ostensibly, a mutually satisfactory revenue sharing and product positioning arrangement can be struck between the two. Will it be enough? BSB is betting on its Indianised games as its main strategy. “Indian consumers don’t care whether you’re an Indianised game or not,” says Kejriwal. “You can’t bank on India to be successful here.” He points to the top 10 games on the Android or iTunes platforms, noticeably bereft of Indianised games.
Ahead
That could be because Indian companies have been behind the global conceptual and design curve. Plus, the funding environment has been anaemic, stunting the vision of ideas in this area. And, low monetisation options probably reinforce the first two problems. However, things are gradually changing. The rates for third-generation (3G) services are dropping and suddenly telcos are beginning to see the spectre of other payment gateways, such as online ‘wallets’, materialise. All it will take is a Flipkart Wallet or a Google Wallet to upend the power of the telcos and change the nature of the game. This could help Tiny Mogul further — after all, the company would want and need subscribers from other telcos as well.
So, while Tiny Mogul’s products might not be the next Angry Birds or Farmvilles of India, a storm of decreasing data rates, increasing smartphone sales and good content — perhaps even Indianised ones — might ignite the beginnings of a mobile gaming revolution in India. “Maybe this company does have the werewithal to unlock this market. And, if it does, we’ll be right behind it,” says Kejriwal.