News & Analysis

WinZO: A Social Gaming Platform That Drives Business Innovation

At a time where business plans are going topsy-turvy in the post-Covid19 scenario, a new startup has come to fore to take some unique initiatives across select business verticals that could provide innovative solutions to small and medium enterprises in these troubled times.

Backed by Kaalari Capital, the vernacular social gaming platform called WinZO is driving innovation across all its verticals, right from content creation to operations and marketing, to change the way business is perceived and conducted while in parallel empowering game developers, women, college students and micro-vernacular influencers.

As part of its WinZO Superstar Program to empower micro-influencers across 12 languages in India, the company select a small bunch of people from social platforms like Tiktok, Youtube, and Insta who promote WinZO on these channels. And what do they get in return? Influencers like Lokesh and Yash Kumar have received Rs. 7 lakh and Rs. 5 lakh respectively during the lockdown for promoting the brand through their social channels.

Yash comes from a small town in Haryana, Palwal whose subscriber base increased to 200k while working with WinZO for almost 2 years now. Lokesh on the other hand is based in Hyderabad and has reached a subscriber base of 2Million already!

Lokesh said, “I have been an avid gamer since my school days, I always wanted to make my profession around it hence I decided to start a Youtube Channel and stream online. I discovered earning potential on WinZO almost 8 months back and there has been no turning back since. I have been able to purchase good gadgets from my earnings on WinZO, which has helped me shape my influencer career better. The entire team is very supportive and is there to help me for anything day and night.”

Another Youtuber, Amritpal Singh, is based in Ganganagar, Rajasthan. With 495k subscribers Amritpal has earned over Rs. 3 lac on WinZO within 6 months. Amritpal mostly spends his earnings for his education and family expenses.

WinZO in return incentivizes these influencers for almost every step/activity their referral engages on the app. WinZO Superstars earn up to ₹ 50,000 daily on the platform. Most of these influencers are young creators from T2-T5 vernacular Bharat. We have partnered with over 1,00,000+ such leaders.

WinZO has also partnered with over 600+ housewives for translating trivia and app assets in 12 different languages. This is a significant departure from the intuitive business practice of hiring agencies and consultants. This has helped empower the housewives and young students who can work with flexible timing and earn up to ₹ 25,000 per month.

To facilitate this entire process, WinZO has made a centralized Language Management System where the translators can login and work at their convenience from any part of India. This strategy helps WinZO remain lean as an organization and enables to bring an authentic vernacular experience to the users with the language that they use in daily lives.

Saumya Singh Rathore, Co-Founder- WinZO says, “We are in the business of social gaming and it is only logical to involve that element of Social in our business. WinZO aspires to, be all and end all for mobile entertainment and this cannot be achieved without path breaking and innovative solutions. Our approach of partnering with and empowering people in T2-T5 cities not only helps us remain lean and scalable but also brings that authentic touch to our product. Be it developers, translators or influencers, everyone is a part of our journey and vision to create Netflix of Gaming. WinZO is for Bharat and by Bharat”.

WinZO has successfully partnered with gaming studios and independent developers by offering them infrastructure for developing quality games. WinZO’s Developer Console has enabled developers to submit their games for an immediate 100X increase in revenue these assets were making. Through this program developers from South Korea, China, Africa, Turkey, and Russia were able to launch their popular games for the first time in India through WinZO.  WinZO has successfully partnered with more than 200 individual game developers and small scale Indian and foreign studios to bring great content for its 20 Mn and rapidly growing user base.

One such example is Vivek Kumar, who is a full time IT professional and part time game developer. He says, “I have been extremely passionate about developing games; however, I couldn’t venture into the industry as a full-time opportunity due to uncertain market opportunities and revenue streams. After my working hours in office, I developed games as a hobby and approached WinZO with a game after reading about their Developers’ fund. My game was well appreciated and quickly came onboarded on WinZO. The revenue which started from $100 in the first week grew to over $500 per day within 1.5 months. These kinds of encouraging returns have given me great confidence in my content development capabilities, and I can finally dream about starting my own Studio in near future”

WinZO’s growth story has been inspiring as well. WinZO has a high user engagement rate with average time spent on the app by the users is more than 55 minutes. It crossed the 20 million install base mark in a record time of less than a year. With its microtransaction led social gaming model, which sees over 250MM microtransactions per month, WinZO has revolutionized the game monetization model. It is independent of in-app purchases and subscriptions which have been observed to be inefficient models in the price conscious developing markets.

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