A Story of Continuous Growth
Indian skill game developer and operator Baazi Games has been growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 70 per cent for the last three years. Currently, the company’s three verticals – PokerBaazi, RummyBaazi and BalleBaazi – have a joint customer base of 10 million people. In a recent interview for the Business Insider, Baazi Games’ co-founder and Marketing Director Varun Ganjoo revealed that the company is aiming at a massive 100 per cent growth of its users for the financial year of 2022.
The team of Baazi started work back in 2013, when a group of passionate poker lovers decided they wanted to provide a superior experience to desi players of their favourite game. Ganjoo added that this was a time when good online poker platforms were not yet available in India. PokerBaazi was finalized and launched in October 2014, after a year of hard work on gaming software development and legal research matters.
Having gained experience and market momentum, in the beginning 2018, the company ventured into the realm of online fantasy gaming with BalleBaazi. One year later, in 2019, the team launched its rummy vertical RummyBaazi with the aim to further diversify its portfolio.
Corporate Philosophy Revolves Around Product and Customer Experience Quality
Baazi Games see themselves as a product-centric company that depends entirely on its own in-house tech development to create unique content. Focus on detail is seen as crucial, small things such as the colour of the felt or the size of the numbers on the cards are given thorough attention.
The skill game developer enterprise is proud of the quality of its customer experience organization, especially in its poker branch. The company’s Marketing Director is happy that the platform is regarded by many as the provider of the best customer support in the whole industry.
Sustainable growth is seen as going through responsible gaming. In the lack of central regulation on the matter, the company decided to self-regulate and was the first platform to implement an automatic responsible gaming system called Baazi Care and tasked to detect signs of addiction in gamers early on. Such users are given the options to restrict their gameplay or take a full-time break from gaming.
In July 2020, Baazi Games organized the first of its kind Facebook live session on the subject of “mental health at the felts” together with Poker Boot Camp India aimed to help people strengthen their minds. The session was co-hosted by Baazi Care Expert dr. Nisha Khanna who said, “a mentaly healthy person is better able to deal with real-life situations in a much more calm and controlled way”.
Baazi Games intends to continue employing digital advertising options, even though the importance of TV is undeniable. Online channels like OTT, social media and the influencer market allow for precise targeting of campaigns and are especially suitable for the digitally-savvy audience of the company.
Changing the Overall Perception on Skill Gaming
Over the years, a great deal of the company’s efforts have been focused not on the product itself, but rather on helping enhance the public’s understanding of skill gaming.
According to Ganjoo, not so long ago, card games like poker and rummy used to be regarded as gambling and carried a certain stigma with them. Over the years, Baazi Games has undertaken a number of different initiatives that have helped shift the audience’s perception on skill games.
Baazi was the first company from the digital real money gaming industry to start a partnership with a celebrity. Impressed by the enormous online presence at that time of Bollywood actress Sunny Leone (Karenjit Kaur Vohra), Baazi Games got her on board as their first brand ambassador. Her huge fame in India did a lot in raising awareness about poker, especially among desi women.
The so-called PokerBaazi Team Pro, a group of hired professionals, participated in a series of webinars talking about the various aspects of the game that make it a skill-based activity. Partnerships with prominent educational institutions also played their role in raising awareness and attracting new people to the cause.
Baazi is not Alone in the Effort
The nation’s industry of skill game developers and casino app operators actively participates in the movement to change public perception on card games of skill. In 2016, poker site Adda52 roped in Delhi professional player Nikita Luther to its Pro Live team.
When making the announcement, Anuj Gupta, founder and CEO of Adda52 said: “Nikita’s passion for sportifying the game of poker, is in line with our vision.” Luther replied: “I passionately aspire to remove the taboo and ignorance associated with poker.”
In June 2018, Nikita Luther went to Las Vegas and became the first Indian woman to get hold of the World Series of Poker (WSOP) gold bracelet. Then, in 2020, she topped the Global Poker Index (GPI) for Indian ladies and again proved worthy of her nickname – the Superwoman of desi poker.
The Whole Online Gaming Industry is in its Sunrise Stage
Fast growing business segments that show great promise, especially in the IT or telecommunications sectors, are casually referred to as being in their ‘Sunrise phase’. Led by world’s cheapest data plans and increasing smartphone penetration including rural areas, India’s online gambling industry like Purewin.com is enjoying its sunrise status.
A recently published KPMG report expects the sector to be growing with a CAGR of 21 per cent for the next five years. Online gaming revenues for the Fiscal Year of 2021 are estimated at ₹ 13,600 crore, to be generated by a 433-million-strong user base. For FY 2025, the size of the market is projected at ₹ 29,000 crore and 657 million users.
Disclaimer: Gambling involves an element of financial risk and maybe addictive. Please play responsibly and at your own risk. Subject to applicable laws.
