Here’s how this gaming platform engaging with 40 million users every month has been helping apps and websites increase their engagement levels

• Gamezop is a multigame platform that allows users to play games with a single tap and without installing any apps.
• Between last year and now, Gamezop has had an impressive growth, it has tripled its revenues and user numbers.
• We speak to Yashash Agarwal, CEO and Founder, Gamezop who tells us that in 2020, nearly 400 million Indians played mobile games and nearly 272 million of those played on Gamezop. He tells us about the platform's journey so far.

The Indian gaming market is headed towards explosive growth in the next four years, according to a recently released report by KPMG. According to its reports, ‘Beyond the tipping point – A primer on Casual gaming in India’, overall online casual gaming sub-segment in India stood at a size of Rs 60 billion in FY21 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of29% over FY21-25, to reach a size of Rs 169billion.

The opportunities in the segment are massive and in the last few years, we have seen an impressive amount of e-gaming platforms come to the fore and engage with people. However, it is not just the likes of Dream11 and MyCircle11 that are helping the segment grow.

Over the years, many of us have come across gaming sections added to different websites and publications and most of us have ended up spending much more time on these websites than we otherwise would have, thanks to the gaming sections that are simple to play.

Homegrown multi-games platform Gamezop is one such platform that is behind a lot of the gaming sections you see on many non-game websites and apps. Over the years, the platform has built a robust business model where it does not have to spend anything on creating the games it hosts, and is yet able to engage with close to 40 million players ever month.

This has also given advertisers an opportunity to target an engaged set of audiences on Gamzop’s platform.

Gamezop had also raised Rs 32 crore in a funding round led by Bitkraft Ventures in August last year.

We recently caught up with Yashash Agarwal, CEO and Founder, Gamezop, who told us how the platform has been building its business, steadily increasing the number of platform it hosts on while also becoming profitable.

Excerpts:

Q) Walk me through the journey of Gamezop. How did it come into being, what was the gap in the market you were trying to fill?
Gamezop was started when we realized that the experience of getting into casual games was too cumbersome owing to the necessity for installing each game as an app first. Before YouTube was launched in 2005, each video was downloaded as a file and played on a media player. That is exactly where smartphone gaming is today:games need to be installed individually, which is extremely frictional.

Gamezop makes games instant, like YouTube does with videos. On our game center, users play games just like they play videos: with a single tap and without the need to install apps.

Q) What kind of growth have you witnessed in the past few months? You are already profitable?
Gaming companies around the world have seen their heyday in the past few months with people spending so much time indoors. Between last year and now, we have tripled our revenues and user numbers.

The interesting thing about our business is that we are growing while being profitable. We have kept our unit economics quite disciplined and our Series A last year hasn’t changed that.

Q) How does Gamezop work? Where do users find you?
Gamezop is a multigame platform that works very unconventionally to acquire users – rather than pushing app installs of games, we embed our game centre within non-gaming apps and websites, allowing their users to play games instantly. This way, we do not have to spend money to acquire users inorganically but can piggyback on the distribution of other products.

The idea is to not push another product to users but meet them within popular apps and websites which they are already using.

Q) How do apps and websites using your platform benefit?
Apps and websites that integrate our game centre see their engagement levels going up immediately. This is because our entire offering can be consumed by users within these products. Let’s say an OTT platform adds a gaming section within their product through our game centre. Naturally, users who have affinity for gaming will now start spending additional time on the platform because they will engage in two forms of content and not just one.

You will find our games within numerous news, media, and entertainment products, including all key Times of India properties, SonyLiv, Amazon, MSN, Goibibo, and Paytm.

Q) How many apps and websites have integrated your platform? What kind of user base do you have currently through your network?
Over 2,800 products have Gamezop powering games for their users. This allows us to entertain over 40 million users each month.

In 2020, nearly 400 million Indians played mobile games; 272 million of those played on Gamezop.

Q) Are your games non-intrusive or can ads be put into the games too?
We can run brand promotions within our games in a non-intrusive manner. No ads appear during the gameplay. However, in breakthrough moments such as when the game is loading or the user has crossed a level, we see that the users have very high attention. This is where we place brands and allow them to tell their story.

Q) Is your platform available internationally too?
More than 50% of our revenues come from outside India. Our games have actually done very well internationally.

Q) What are a few factors that have helped take you where you are? Are there more such platforms available or do you have the first-movers' advantage?
Users don’t need to download newspapers as PDFs or music as mp3 files. They are able to consume these forms of content online. However, users had to download gaming apps to play games.

As Gamezop removed this friction of installing gaming apps, it genuinely solved a problem for the users which has played a big hand in its growth.

There are various gaming platforms out there. Not everyone is looking to deliver high-quality gaming experiences within third-party products.

Q) E-gaming is witnessing impressive growth in India. Do you have plans of diversifying your offering, work closely with game developers and launch your own games in the future?
We have truly amazing developers making games for the Gamezop game centre so the need to do it ourselves hasn’t arisen.

Q) How have you been helping the developer community? How does this community benefit from being a part of Gamezop?
Gamezop is truly excited to be able to play role in nurturing the gaming ecosystem. There are over 300 games on Gamezop that we have acquired from over 75 developers. With these developers, our relationship is anything but transactional. We work very closely with them right of ideating the game to finally launching it on our platform. We are happy to say that we have opened a new stream of monetisation for these game developers and are determined to deepen our relationships with them. The success of Gamezop is closely tied to the success of the game developers.

We have a robust community of engaged game developers where ideas and exchanged. A well-knit network of professionals always raises the bar for everyone.

Q) How are you different from other gaming platforms? How big is your team? Are you also looking for funding?
Smartphone gaming is tied to pushing installs of apps, and most gaming platforms seem comfortable with that. With our approach of having a game centre for instant games, we are challenging the status quo.

We have a 75-member team.

We raised our Series A round last year led by Bitkraft Ventures. We have been growing profitably since and do not see a need to raise capital at the moment.

Q) What is your vision for Gamezop?
Just like using Gmail or Facebook is the default log-in method for most apps, Gamezop wishes to be the default entertainment section within apps around the world.