India’s largest social gaming platform, WinZO is launching an investment initiative, ‘Gaming Lab’, jointly with Kalaari Capital, to encourage and support India’s gaming ecosystem. ‘Gaming Lab’ will invest across all forms of interactive entertainment apps in India with a flexible corpus starting at over half a million dollars.
Association with WinZO, which hosts 80+ games in 12+ languages and has 80% users consuming the app in vernacular languages, will further help Gaming Studios and Gaming Companies to be culturally relevant for Bharat. WinZO will also mentor these gaming companies working towards revolutionising the gaming ecosystem by means of video streaming, game tech, innovations. The selected companies will receive support and drive effective monetization, growth and also benefit from the tech expertise that WinZO has to offer.
The ‘Gaming Lab’ will be launched during GameCon 2021 (https://www.gamecon.in) – a conference which will witness participation of industry leaders in the gaming sector and discuss various facets associated with the future of India’s Gaming Ecosystem, trends in global and Indian gaming. The $200B+ global gaming market is ready for disruption from India. GameCon 2021 will be a platform where industry leaders will be discussing how various technologies such as Blockchain, AR/VR, NFTs can create new monetization models like play to win rewards. Ensure that we are bringing in relevant stakeholders to discuss current trends in global and Indian gaming.
GameCon 2021 will also host India’s second community tournament by Axie Infinity, an NFT based online game. Axie Infinity is the highest revenue accruing game based on Ethereum with an expansive user base. GameCon 2021 will conduct panel discussions on emerging models in online gaming and the potential for the sector in India, host workshops on how to get started with gaming as a career in India & getting started with your Axie journey. The speakers include Vani Kola (MD, Kalaari Capital), Jeffery Zirlin (Co-founder, Sky Mavis – Axie Infinity), Harri Manninen (Founder, Play Ventures), Paavan Nanda (Co-founder of WinZO Games, Zostel & ZO Rooms), Dheeraj Shah (Host, Desi Crypto Show), Michail Katkoff (CEO & Co-founder of Savage Game Studios) among others.
Commenting on the new association, Saumya Singh Rathore, the co-founder of WinZO said, “We are looking to invest across all forms of interactive entertainment including but not limited to games and ancillary industries such as content creation, live-ops, security etc. We are placed in a strategically sound position owing to our understanding of tech, the real pulse of India that is at the centre of online gaming evolution that we as a nation are witnessing. These capabilities combined, we will be able to sufficiently provide requisite support in the form of capital, guidance and strategic help to further this socio-economically critical ecosystem. WinZO’s Center of Excellence will help drive growth, strategy and distribution for the selected applicant, while driving monetization in the world’s largest engagement powerhouse.”
Towards its efforts of strengthening gaming development, WinZO recently had announced a $20 Million game developer fund III with the idea to holistically boosting the global game development ecosystem including game design, economies around gaming, content creation, live-ops, and security through Capital investment, infrastructural support and monetization support.
