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In January 2007, the GameBox National Championship, one of the biggest online game competitions in India, was conducted at Reliance Web World outlets across the country. Zapak.com (Zapak) was the gaming partner for the event. Nearly 11,000 gamers participated in the competition and around Rs 1 million was distributed as prize money.1 Industry experts noted that the fanfare with which the event was conducted and the widespread response it received highlighted the growing popularity of online gaming in India.
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Zapak was part of Zapak Digital Entertainment Limited, a venture of Reliance Entertainment, one of the companies in the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG). During its launch in November 2006, Rajesh Sawhney (Sawhney), President of Reliance Entertainment, said, "The launch of Zapak.com comes at the right time when the Indian market is poised for a gaming explosion.
The demographic and economic profile present the ideal conditions for the Indian gaming market to grow by leaps and bounds. With 54 percent of the population below 25 years of age, India is only getting younger. Therefore, gaming is an important part of our entertainment strategy, and we are investing $100 million in this venture over the next 3 years. We at Zapak believe that gaming is in our DNA."2
Zapak was part of the ADAG's strategy to become the dominant player in web and PC-based gaming business. In November 2006, ADAG had announced that it "would invest around US$ 100 million in its gaming venture over the next three years"3 toward development of human resources, technology, content and distribution.
The company also planned to set up exclusive Zapak gaming cafes across the country. Sawhney said, "Our aim is to create as many as 1,00,000 gaming seats across the country with 50-60 million registered gamers in the next 18-24 months."4 Rohit Sharma (Sharma), COO of Zapak Digital Entertainment, also said that the portal had got 0.5 million registrations within two months of its launch.5 Zapak aimed to achieve a user base of 10 million by the end of 2007.6
Zapak started with nearly 150 casual games, which were to be offered free in the initial six months and to be charged thereafter. The games would cater to single player format as well as Massively Multiplayer Online Games7 (MMOG) format. Some of the games that were being offered by Zapak included arcade, shooter, racing, chess, cricket etc.
Zapak also roped in top Bollywood stars like Salman Khan and Bipasha Basu to work with its team to conceptualize a few games in the casual games category. Zapak said that it would have a special zone on its portal on Salman Khan that would feature games based on the star. At the launch function, Sharma said, "Today we also announce our association with Salman Khan for creating a zone with him on the portal.
This zone will host games based on the superstar, and Salman will also work with us to conceptualize some games."8 Zapak was expected to diversify its game offerings to genres such as mythology, action, racing, puzzles, strategies, sudoku wars etc. The portal also planned to launch Zapak Girls, a website that would have games targeted at girls.
Zapak said that advertisements would be the main source of revenue and it would likely to remain so in the near future. With regard to advertisements, the online gaming sector in India had witnessed the trend of advergaming where games were designed around the attributes and values of a brand. Contest2win had developed games for brands like Airtel, Garnier, Pepsi, etc.
Hungama was expected to develop an advergame about Lux and Sugarfree, while Zapak had tie ups with Logitech and Titan Fastrack. Sharma said, "Exploring advergaming was very natural for us. Besides other companies have an advantage if they tie-up with Zapak that ways they will see more traffic which converts into more promotion."9 He added that Zapak planned to get 30% of its revenues through advergaming.
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1] "Gamebox National Championship '07," www.techtree.com, January 29, 2007.
2] "Reliance ADAG Launches Zapak.com," www.techtree.com, November 27, 2006.
3] "Reliance Launches Casual Gaming Portal Zapak.com; Ties up with Salman Khan," www.contentsutra.com, November 26, 2006.
4] "Zapak to invest USD 100 mn for expansion," www.infotech.indiatimes.com, December 19, 2006.
5] "Zapak unveils online Grandmaster Championship," www.dnaindia.com, January 17, 2007.
6] "Zapak.com: Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group enters online gaming scene" www.indiabroadband.net, November 26, 2006.
7] MMOG enables many players to simultaneously interact with each other in a video game over the Internet.
8] "Reliance ADAG launches Zapak.com, to invest $100 Million in Online Gaming; ties-up with Bollywood Star Salman Khan," http://www.techshout.com, November 28, 2006.
9] Dheeraj Tiwari, "Gaming Gets A 'Brand' New Makeover," http://economictimes.indiatimes.com, February 11, 2007.
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