WinZO aims to bring 500 million people of vernacular Bharat to use digital payments

WinZO, India’s largest vernacular arcade gaming platform, today announced that 30% of its users on the platform are making their first-ever digital entertainment transaction through WinZO.

80% of these players are using the platform in a non-English language, and playing from 1500+ cities, towns, villages across India. This number is set to increase as the gaming platform reaches to more users in Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4 and 5 cities in India. India is already a global number one in terms of mobile gaming installs.

Gaming in India is witnessing noteworthy transition, owing to the digital revolution and a multitude of other factors like increasing mobile phone penetration with bigger screen size and storage facility, low-cost data, growth in Micropayments and rise in disposable income.

WinZO, backed by Kaalari Capital, offers 30+ games on its App-based platform in 10 languages, namely English, Hindi, Bangla, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi and Bhojpuri. WinZO Games is offering games in multiple formats like 24*7 Tournaments, Real-time multiplayer format – WinZO Baazi, and the Versus mode. The ticket for games varies from Rs. 2 to Rs. 25 with the average time spent on the platform is more than 55 minutes and with more than 90% of users are using the app from non-metro cities of the country.

Commenting on strengthening the online gaming ecosystem Mr. Paavan Nanda, Co-Founder WinZO Games said: ‘As Mobile gaming ecosystem consolidates in India, it is important for the industry to focus on the quality of content and at the same time improve the monetization to expedite the growth. With WinZO,  we are bringing the much-enjoyed off-line experience of arcade gaming to the digital grid, promoting social gaming and bite-sized entertainment in India. Many WinZO users are making their very first  entertainment and media transaction on the platform and we aim to strengthen this confidence by adopting a more social and customized content creation for our users.’

He further added ‘Typically a user makes 8 transactions on the platform in a month. These are all bite-sized transactions. As the audience is maturing the gaming industry is likely to dominate the market as more opportunities open up for gaming platforms and game developers. It is notable that the industry now is also attracting talents across the value chain like data scientist, designers, a behavioral psychologist and programmers’ 

WinZO is designed to bring about a stable monetization model in the Indian gaming ecosystem, which experiences one of the highest engagements globally. There are 400 MM internet users who spend on an average over 45 minutes daily playing games on their smartphones. These users hardly make in-app purchases and Advertisement revenues for some of these Digital Assets are abysmally low vis-a-vis some of its global counterparts.

According to the recent Media and Entertainment report by KPMG Mobile Gaming is set to grow at a CAGR of 32.2% from FY19 to FY24, user’s engagement especially among a younger audience, gaining further tractions. 

The average mobile device user spends 3-4 hours every day watching OTT, playing games and music or on online shopping. Mobile gaming, however, is the fastest-growing source of entertainment for Indian users. This upsurge will create immense opportunities in the gaming ecosystem, leading to employment generation, entertainment, engagement, and market growth.