10x surge in game play on Ludo & Carrom on WinZO
WinZO, a Kalaari funded vernacular social gaming platform, has seen a 10X increase in the game play of age-old board games including Ludo and Carrom during the lockdown period. The digital avatars of Ludo and Carrom are now making waves as people resort to online gaming to connect with their friends and families and relive childhood memories amidst the lockdown.
The platform features games like Ludo, Carrom and Chess in available in 12 regional languages on WinZO where the users also have an option to audio/video chat with other players and win exciting prizes as well. WinZO allows its users to invite their friends in Private modes for these multiplayer games. These games can be played in a Versus mode (two people directly compete with each other) or a Private tournament, where people can directly invite them to join the game- friends compete with each other.
WinZO has observed a surge of 5X in the private play modes (Vs-Mode and Tournaments) which clearly indicates that people are preferring to play with their friends, family and their significant others, separated by the Covid rather than with strangers online, which was a previous trend in gaming.
“In evenings in Calcutta, you can spot people sitting and playing carrom every few meters – it’s almost like an evening regime. Games such as carrom, ludo, and chess are consumed offline hugely. We just made all these available online for people to continue indulging while they also practice social distancing. We have opened every game on the platform for free as well, to help our users to stay connected during this unprecedented time of complete social isolation” said Paavan Nanda, Co-founder WinZO Games, he is an alumni from IIM Calcutta and had lived in the city during his MBA days.
In the casual gaming side, WinZO recently partnered with Tencent Games and Garena, amid the two giants saw a huge advantage to penetrate the deeper roots of Bhaarat via the vernacular platform. WinZO plans to go live with 30 more games within this month to cater to this newly adopted audience on its platform. To make the process transparent and democratised, WinZO also launched the Developer Console early this year. The concurrent users are increasing at 30%-40% day on day and the paid conversions have increased by 20% on the platform, suggesting that the sentiment of paying users is not impacted yet.
About WinZO: WinZO is the largest vernacular gaming platform backed by marquee investors. It is available in 12 languages. The platform offers nearly 70+ games across multiple formats viz Tournament, Versus Mode and Table Format. On a single platform users can play all popular games such as Carrom, Cricket, 8 Ball Pool, Sniper 3D, Bubble Shooter, Fruit Samurai, Knife Up, Fantasy League, and Trivia based questions. These games are acquired from developers and studios from across the world. WinZO is designed to solve for a stable monetization in the Indian Gaming ecosystem, which experiences one of the highest engagements globally – a unique micro-transaction led model.
WinZO is a series A funded venture and is Kalaari’s second-biggest bet in the gaming category after Dream11. The Company is co-founded by Mr Paavan Nanda and Ms Saumya Singh Rathore. Paavan is a second-time entrepreneur. His first venture was Zostel & ZO Rooms, a Tiger Global backed aggregator model. Zostel is now Asia’s largest chain of backpackers hostels. Paavan’s corporate stint before entrepreneurship was with Bain & Company, Abbott Labs, and Bank of America – Global Trading Desk. He is an engineering graduate from NSIT – 2009, and completed his MBA from IIM Calcutta in 2014.
10x surge in game play on Ludo & Carrom on WinZO
Saumya is a Psychology post-graduate from The University of Manchester- Also a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. She has worked with KPMG London for about 1 years. She spent 5 years with the Times Group across- Print, Radio, and Television. She was also a part of the core team at ZO Rooms/Zostel and was majorly responsible for setting the Org for the launch and growth of ZO Rooms. She led the launch of ZO Rooms along with her current co-founder, Paavan and later teamed up with him to launch WinZO Games.
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