Ankush Gera, CEO, Junglee Games
How did you start? What were the key objectives behind it?
We saw a deep hole in the Indian gaming landscape. Gamers in India don’t have sufficient high quality localized content. We felt that if we could offer the right content to gamers, that will change their whole gaming experience. This is the bet we made and fortunately at that time my software business based in the Bay area was fairly successful and stable. So Junglee became the next 5-10 year bet. The goal was and remains simple: provide high quality localized games to Indian users worldwide.
How online gaming industry is growing in India?
The Indian gaming industry is still at a nascent stage and is expected to grow to $500M by 2018 riding on the explosive growth of mobile phones and improved infrastructure. The growth is primarily driven by availability of low cost 3G enabled devices and the competitive 3G costs.
What are the challenges and opportunities in this segment?
Payment processing, lack of operator billing, lack of localized content are major challenges faced in the current scenario. COD still accounts for a decent percentage of the transactions for ecommerce players in India. Besides rail and air tickets, Indian consumers are still uncomfortable in using credit cards, debit cards and net banking for online transactions. Since mobile has been leading the growth of this industry, operator billing would make huge sense if implemented correctly. There is a lot of scope for companies who can introduce one click payment in India. Localized content too is an area to look out for.
What kind of games are more engaging in social media and online platform?
Most of the popular games are casino and strategy. Next up are sports and puzzle based games. Augmented reality, event based, educational and location based games also work well.
How to monetize through these games?
Freemium model where a small percentage of users buy virtual currency to buy in-app goodies and ads.
What are your plans for 2015-16?
We plan to launch more localized content in the current financial year. We are in the process of acquiring IP partnerships which will be used as the core theme for some of our new games. In addition, we want to launch games that drive positive social impact across India.