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Parth Chadha lays out the monetization strategies for next-gen creators | Stan
25 Plays8 months ago
In an age where conventional career paths are being taken over by emerging paths such as content creation, YouTube, and influencer roles, discover how even with a modest following of just 1000 true fans, people can now start their journey as influencers. Parth Chadha delves into how Stan is reshaping the industry by bridging gaming enthusiasts and content creators with their fan base, enabling monetisation opportunities. This episode offers an exclusive look into what's next for the influencer world.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, everyone. I'm Parc Chaddah. I am the founder and CEO at Stan. Excited to
Introduction to Stan and Parc Chaddah
00:00:06
Speaker
be here.
Shift in Career Aspirations
00:00:19
Speaker
The generation that my child belongs to no longer looks at science or medicine as aspirational career choices. Rather, the most aspirational career choice for them is to be a content creator, a YouTuber or an influencer. In fact, my child is already saying, don't forget to like and subscribe when I record his videos. But as things stand today, being an influencer is like wanting to be a Bollywood star. Millions aspire to be it, but very few are actually able to make it.
00:00:48
Speaker
and either you make it or you live a life of struggle and poverty.
Monetization through Stan
00:00:53
Speaker
However, unlike the previous generation, today you can be a penny influencer with just one thousand true fans and thanks to platforms like Stan, you can also start to monetize.
00:01:04
Speaker
Parth Chhatta wins Stan as a platform to bring together gaming fans and content creators and allows creators to monetize their fan base. If you want to get a glimpse into the future of the influencer economy, then this episode of The Founder Thesis is a must listen. Like, you know, what's an elevator pitch of Stan?
00:01:34
Speaker
Okay, you put me in a tough spot. But that's, that's like the usual one. So yeah, Stan is basically a gamers companion app. Gamers basically come and engage with each other with other you with your favorite youtubers, they can play
00:01:53
Speaker
collect, earn on the platform. So it's more like our Discord plus plus for the gamers.
Stan's Features and Functionality
00:02:01
Speaker
So we are essentially solving the problem of gamers lacking sense of belongingness and connecting them with their favorite KOLs and YouTubers. Describe the platform to me. What does the app look like? What's the look and feel of it? What's the user experience of it?
00:02:20
Speaker
So basically, it's a mobile app. You will find it on the Play Store and App Store. Currently, we are trending on number four, by the way, on the Play Store. So Stan, you download it because either you play, you know, these games like BGMI, which is PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, Call of Duty.
00:02:40
Speaker
Or you watch some of these famous YouTubers on YouTube, which just play games and have fun. So that's the reason you download Stan. And then when you come to the platform, you see multiple features there. So you either collect these cards, which are trump cards of your favorite YouTubers.
00:03:00
Speaker
And through that, you get access to audio rooms like, you know, like the sense of Clubhouse or Twitter spaces. Right. So you get to talk to talk to your favorite YouTubers and you can launch custom game lobbies from that. Let's say I and you want to play a game, quick game of PUBG Mobile with our favorite YouTuber. For example, let's say Jonathan, who's like the big guy who's got like 10 million subscribers. Right. So that can happen on Stan.
00:03:29
Speaker
And while all that happens, you can engage with the other gamers. There are fan rooms, there are chat rooms, then there's a unique place where you can collect and buy gaming cords. So NetNet, it's like a community platform for gamers, where you can typically get involved in all the things which a gamer goes through in his daily life.
00:03:54
Speaker
These rooms are what, are they like Facebook groups or? So again, you know, I have this card also. So, okay. Then it becomes slightly difficult. Got it. So it's basically you, um, it's like you, uh, me and, you know, a bunch of other gamers, we are on Stan on this custom club, uh, clubs called Stan clubs, where it's, let's say labeled as play BGMI and have fun.
00:04:20
Speaker
Right. So let's say 70 of us are in that club and the hoster, which could be either you me, or it could be a famous YouTuber, he drops in some messages and custom game room ID, where if we use that in the game of PUBG, we can jump in the same room and all of us can play together in the game of PUBG.
00:04:40
Speaker
So basically the community thing happens on Stan, the gameplay happens on their respective game apps. And everything apart from just playing, you can follow your favorite creator, you can gift the creator, you can basically buy his collectibles on the app, and if you buy and upgrade his collectible, you get a signed jersey or a meet and greet, or you can even earn
00:05:06
Speaker
Uh, game codes, redeem codes. So in a gamer's life, there are a lot of rewards, which are very fascinating, right? Like it could be fan rewards. Like I'm a big fan of some guy. I can actually get a chance to play with him, or it could be game rewards. Like it could be game currencies, like PUBG's own currencies, free fire diamonds, Google play redeem codes.
00:05:28
Speaker
Or it could be like, you know, cash rewards by participating in tournaments, right? So all these rewards and that sense of belongingness that, hey, you know, I am friends with Akshay and we both are on Stan and we chat with each other and play with each other. That community, the sense of belongingness is what Stan is helping in the gamer's life.
00:05:51
Speaker
So when you're actually playing PUBG at that time, you can have your community within PUBG only, right? Like you can talk to other people who are playing PUBG with you. But if you want to do a custom game room with your YouTuber, all that features are not in the game right now, right? And also you can make more friends on the stand platform. You can do a bunch of other stuff by apart from just playing, right?
India's Gaming Market and Stan's Potential
00:06:15
Speaker
Oh, so you can discover a community basically. You can play, chat, meet, you know, a bunch of stuff. Yeah. I mean, we've kind of, you know, elevated the experience of communities in gaming. That's what I would say in one line. Why is this a...
00:06:37
Speaker
Why is this an investable business? If I were a VC, what would be your pitch to me as a VC? Why is this a venture-backable business?
00:06:46
Speaker
Oh, great question. I mean, the day we started, we had to get answered to this question because either it's an investable VC business or it's like a bootstrap model we go with, right? So see, India itself has 500 million gamers and beyond that, right? And it's growing very rapidly. So market is pretty huge and global market is a lot more, more than that and a lot more mature, right? And India is on a very,
00:07:14
Speaker
interesting standpoint right now where gaming has become our lifestyle, right? And so I have seen that the gaming industry has seen multiple waves. Earlier we used to be called as the DAU farms.
00:07:29
Speaker
Let's say India is mainly users. You don't see users buying and playing and paying us. But now you see there's so many interesting avenues where people are spending money in the game. In-app purchase business has become so successful that we've seen like $700 million in India just from non-RMG games on the Play Store.
00:07:55
Speaker
So RMG is basically real money gaming. So gaming has different buckets, right? So NetNet, what I'm trying to say is the market is pretty huge. It's close to like $3 million in the market size today in India. And it's growing very rapidly at more than 40% kegger, right?
00:08:17
Speaker
What is this number? Free million dollars is like a cumulative sum of, you know, the money spent in the gaming world, read any kind of games in India, right? And this could be across categories, across avenues, like it could be platform, it could be game, it could be like all those places where people are spending money, right? So big market, good business, and rapidly growing.
Gaming Categories and Fan Engagement
00:08:45
Speaker
So these are something which VC loves, right? And then this could, so Stan could be like a billion dollar idea and that's what we are chasing and whoever comes in and invests right now would get a good multiple as we keep growing rapidly. So definitely it's a very interesting and vegetable business.
00:09:04
Speaker
What are the gaming categories? So you spoke of real money gaming as one category or what else to help me understand the ecosystem. Yeah. Yeah. So typically it's bucketed into esports, which is like games like
00:09:20
Speaker
which are played for the media which have multiplayer and you know streaming so like the likes of bjmi free fire call of duty valor and dota then there could there are games like real money gaming which is the likes of poker ramy fantasy like skillways people are putting in money
00:09:37
Speaker
then hypercasual is a good category where you see games like ludo, karam, flappy bird, farm vale, right? And then there could be time killer games, strategy games, where, you know, time killer is like just, you know, spending time on the game, like 2048, which could be like an overlap with hypercasual. And strategy is something like where you need to build your, you know, things in the game, like,
00:10:05
Speaker
Roblox or GTA and stuff like that, right? So these are different sort of genres which we see and obviously then this could be further bucketed into FPS, MMORPG and... Just give me the full forms of these. Like FPS is first person shooting games.
00:10:24
Speaker
Okay. So basically is FPS right. And then, you know, there are like various, various sort of games where you would see like different, different categories should define these games, but net net, which I have given you is,
00:10:42
Speaker
I mean, role-playing games is part of esports as well, right? MMORPG, which I was talking about, so online games. And all these games could have an offline version, could have an online version, right? Online is when you play with the multiplayer, somebody sitting in Delhi is playing with somebody in Bangalore, right? So stuff like that. Okay, got it.
00:11:06
Speaker
I am assuming that real money gaming hyper casual gaming none of these need a fan engagement platform because I mean there is no
00:11:15
Speaker
There's no deep engagement with the hyper-casual game. There's no deep engagement with real money. It totally depends. If somebody is streaming the game and people are liking that guy or, you know, that streamer, what she liked to watch him. Like for example, a casual game like Among Us, which is like as simple as Mafia, which we used to play in real life, right? Like Villager, Thief.
00:11:46
Speaker
and doctor sort of roles, right? Which you assign and then you have to figure out who's what. So that game is like among us and it's a very hyper casual, but there are content creators, YouTubers who are streaming that game and I'm watching it for fun. So I could be a big fan of that game and that streamer, right? So there's fan engagement on an individual level and also on a game level as well.
Monetization Opportunities for Creators on Stan
00:12:11
Speaker
So if I'm, I could be a big fan of Ludo and I could be part of the Ludo community.
00:12:15
Speaker
right? And there could be guys who are like streaming and having fun, right? So totally depends on how we are looking at it. But what does your data tell you? What kind of game C engagement don't stand?
00:12:29
Speaker
Oh, I mean, we've got a very big community on PUBG Mobile, Free Fire, Valorant. And we do see hyper casual games like Among Us, Pokemon Unite. I mean, these are the names which you will see content creators on YouTube, which are live streaming these games are operating videos and content around it. So these typically these are like some of the very popular titles in Indian market.
00:13:01
Speaker
asset for you is to get the creators or the platform. Like if you get creators, the fans will come automatically. It's one of it. I mean, last year, obviously when we just started, we were building a brand that, you know, people to know what is tan exactly. And now, and that's when we onboarded a lot of creators, the top tier ones. But now there's a very big, long deal of creators who want to come and partner with us.
00:13:19
Speaker
So I'm guessing then a key
00:13:26
Speaker
Because there are two stakeholders in the entire stands ecosystem. One is the gamer himself and the other is the creator. And this gamer could become a creator as well, right? A creator makes money, gamer spends money, right? Or gamer owns the rewards, which I was talking about, like fan rewards, game rewards, and so on and so forth.
00:13:47
Speaker
Because creators are getting a chance to monetize very early, which they are not getting on any other platform in gaming, typically they do YouTube, right? And YouTube does not help them monetize day one. But Stan, you can just start a club on Stan app and you can start monetizing with maybe just like 30 fans of yours.
00:14:08
Speaker
So that is one big reason why these guys come to Stan organically now. And we have a very strong partnership with 500 odd creators in gaming. I mean, there's a very long tail of 1,000 plus creators, which are looking forward to onboarding on Stan. But we are very selective at the moment. And we have all the top guys, mid-core guys on the platform. And yes, you are right to some extent that if the big guys come, the big creators come, they bring their fans.
00:14:37
Speaker
And that's the announcements which come out on the platform and on our social media. And that brings us a lot of gamers on the platform.
00:14:45
Speaker
What's the pitch to a gamer? You said a gamer can start earning from day one with just 30 fans. Help me understand what is it that allows you to start earning. You're talking about the creator? Yeah, the creator. So basically there are clubs on the app, right? On the clubs, I can have ticketed experiences. Like I could just put a ticket to the club, which could be a card. It could be like a token or NFT. Totally depends on the creator.
00:15:14
Speaker
Right. Through that, if somebody buys that, they get a chance to talk and play in a custom game room with that guy. Right. So that sort of revenue goes to the creator. Right. And then the creator can obviously unlock more and more stuff like he can, he or she can sell more, you know, things like if he's launching a merge, he can, you know, talk about that on his club. He can, he can list his digital collectibles on the platform.
00:15:42
Speaker
So he can also grow his other communities through Stan, right? And these are certain ways where these creators are really looking at monetizing through the platform. And I can tell you some numbers like it's been like an year of us being operating in the market and we are close to 3 million plus gamers on the platform with close to 300 odd creators which are live on the platform. And these creators have earned
00:16:12
Speaker
or made money close to 250k, 300k US dollars in the last one year. And that's pretty huge number if you calculate because today creators just have like YouTube ads as the premium earning model and the ads come in favor of you if you crack the algorithm, track your YouTube.
00:16:33
Speaker
Dashboard and things like that and there's no micro ticketing I cannot charge my let's say if I have a big fan who wants to give me let's say like $1,000 I could quickly make that money on Stan I could launch something very exclusive like there are there are cards on the platform which can actually give you a
00:16:49
Speaker
a live meet and greet like a in real life experience. So there are some fans which actually got to meet the top esports players through Stan and that have been very revolutionizing like those videos have been pretty viral like five million views six million views and you would actually see fans you know getting a hug with these esports players touching their feet in fact like they are like very big you know admirers of these youtubers because these guys have become
00:17:17
Speaker
the next-gen celebrities, right? And the younger generation, the Gen Zs and Millennials are relating more with these guys as compared to the sports athletes and, you know, Bollywood celebrities, right? And then gaming is now much more larger than entertainment and, you know, Bollywood, right? That's what even Vishal Mukesh Amani has quoted, that this is going to overtake whatever we have. Okay.
00:17:46
Speaker
What are the kind of digital merchandise that they can sell? So one is you're saying a ticket, which is essentially a buy-in for an experience. It could be a gaming experience. It could be a real life experience. And then you spoke of other digital merchandise like NFT. Like you could sell any collectible, which could be coupled with anything exclusive.
00:18:05
Speaker
Right.
Stan's Economic Model with Stan Coins
00:18:06
Speaker
Like let's say you can launch Akshay's card, which will give you assigned sneakers. Like if you launch your sneakers brand, or it could give you time with Akshay like you and me chatting as a fan and a creator, right? It could give me a live match with you. It could give me a real life meet and greet, right? And it could
00:18:29
Speaker
It could give me what else like a signed merchant, you know, a jersey and so on and so forth. Right. So there are a lot of things and the creator decides what he or she could sell to the fans. Right. And obviously there is a lot of economic play on the platform, which is driven through the stand coins, which is our way of monetizing and the share of the coins which are directly linked to you as a creator goes to you.
00:18:59
Speaker
So that's how the entire model works on the platform. Help me understand this StanCoins model. I mean, we are monetizing already. We are not a community or a social media platform, which is not making money, right? We were very straightforward and upfront that we need to build a business here. So we thought what's the best way to
00:19:25
Speaker
Uh, sort of create wedges and avenues to make money as a business. So we launched a platform currency called Stan coins day one, uh, and that's your entry point to do anything on the app. So you as a gamer or a user would buy Stan coins with the coins. You can buy those tickets, those cards, collectibles, uh, custom game lobbies and so on and so forth. Right. And those coins get circulated and I could sell you my collectible as well. You can trade these cards with me on the app.
00:19:56
Speaker
And that's how the coin even rotates. And it's like a simple in-game currency model. For example, if you're playing Clash Royale, which is a very popular game, you buy those currencies and you keep on spending, spending, and then at some point you feel, okay, I need to buy more. And then you buy more. So it's a community platform with a platform currency called Standcoins, which actually helps the entire economy to be driven on the app.
00:20:26
Speaker
So, stand coins are the only currency, like if I want to buy a digital collectible or anything, I will pay through stand coins. Yes, yes, yes. So, that's a centralized currency, one unified model where we are using. And what does, is it like one rupee, one stand coin or what is this? Ten coins for one rupees.
00:20:46
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. And, uh, do you have to pay the Google Play Store tax on this? Yeah. Yes. That's inevitable. And we have to go. And obviously, I mean, we, uh, it's a lot and that kind of discussions are already, you know, in the way that Google and
00:21:06
Speaker
You know, Indian government is sort of, I think Supreme Court has challenged that and they have started an alternative billing where you can get a discounted billing close to like 17, 15% or if you opt for that. But Google Play show gives a lot of distribution to us. I mean, that's also a lot because like we are trending on number four on the Play show.
00:21:28
Speaker
Right? And that brings a lot of users to us who are gamers. And I think then there's a lot of trust that comes when the app was on the Play Store. And it's like top rated and the ratings are good. So we are OK to share some percentage to Google on that. OK. Interesting. I'll come back to this. There is a recent development of Epic versus Google. I would want to hear that from you. But yeah. OK. Got it.
00:21:57
Speaker
A big fan of a game will essentially come on the platform. They will buy stand coins to do in-app purchases. It could be digital collectibles of the people that they admire. Essentially, it's that only, right? People that they admire, they buy digital collectibles. Also, the coins help them to sort of engage with other gamers on the app.
00:22:22
Speaker
play with other gamers, play with your favorite creators, engage. Why do you need coins to play with other gamers? I mean, there could be a custom game room where there's entry through the coins, right? Okay. And then you need to put it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Got it. So somebody could create a game and charge people to play in it. Okay. Understood. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay. And so that this, uh,
Gamer Engagement and Spending Habits
00:22:54
Speaker
What kind of spends come to you and what kind of spends go to creators? Like if I'm buying a digitally. It's totally dependent. I mean, created to creator and content to content. It varies big time. I mean, there could be objects or SKUs where the creator gets directly 30%. There could be like even 50% totally depends on what kind of, you know, SKU is being launched and creator also, right?
00:23:17
Speaker
the stand coins.
00:23:25
Speaker
Like if it's a big creator, what kind of percentages we sign? Some of them are not on percentage basis. Some of them are like, you know, minimum guarantee that Stan is going to pay them and they give, you know, ex-kind of deliverables across the partnership and exclusivity and so on and so forth. So it's a very mix and match model right now.
00:23:47
Speaker
Let's say for a small-time creator who's not a big celebrity. It could be even 50-50 like you as a creator could make 50% on the entire purchases which has happened to you or your collectibles which are launched on the stan platform. And what about like someone creates a game room and you have to use coins, do they get anything there?
00:24:12
Speaker
Let's say you and I, we are playing together and so we will take a cut rest goes to the guy who creates the game pool. What is the split between people who are gamers versus people who
00:24:32
Speaker
go beyond playing and do stuff like watching other gamers live stream and you know that level of like you know that level of fandom. So what is the split there?
00:24:47
Speaker
I mean there's no there's a great overlap like what happens is these guys are like what like consuming gaming let's say seven eight hours average in a week also right like they're they have some favorite youtubers who are watching and and some of these guys are really super involved who are like super fans
00:25:10
Speaker
who would watch each and every stream of these guys, right? And then there are just gamers who are like casual gamers. Obviously that would be, let's say close to 30, 40% of the entire gaming audience who would just play. Let's say I'm a guy who would just play and not watch, right? And then there could be a situation where I really like the creator and I will watch his streams.
00:25:36
Speaker
So it's a very mixed and overlapping. But people actually are very much inclined towards either learning game or having fun by watching it. So it's a totally different motivation for a gamer to sort of consume the content.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah. So let's say, you know, if there are, let's say 100 million gamers for these esports kind of games, the more involved ones, out of that, would you say like 10 or 20 million would also be doing this deep level of fandom where they are? It's a lot more than that. I think in India,
00:26:14
Speaker
If I tell you like I can give you like a ballpark figure where let's say PUBG Mobile clocks 25 million monthly active users. So you could say that 5 to 10 odd would have watched at least one stream of these games online on YouTube.
00:26:34
Speaker
And that's just one game I'm talking about. So if you look at all the other games, I think there would be a base of close to 30, 40 million users in India who are actually actively consuming gaming content. It could be any sort of content.
00:26:51
Speaker
Okay. And because in games, you typically end up doing in-app purchases. So this audience is easier to monetize because they're already doing in-app purchases. So it is not a far stretch for them to do an in-app purchase on Stan.
00:27:08
Speaker
There are motivations which drive in-app purchase, right? If you are hitting the right use case, people will pay, right? Like the social angle, the creator and fan angle, I think definitely wants gamers to spend, right?
00:27:25
Speaker
Or if it's helping them win more rewards, which could help them in the journey, then it also helps them a lot. Let's say if I want to buy something in a game of PUBG, I need, so I can actually buy it by using Redeem Courts, Kogel Play Redeem Courts. And if I can win those Redeem Courts on Stan, it's a big win for me as a gamer. So it's sort of enabling his entire, you know, economy in the gaming life.
00:27:54
Speaker
And how do you win the team codes? Oh, you play the contest, you play these, uh, custom game rooms, uh, like the price pools have these, uh, game codes and reading codes as, as the, uh, for the gamers. Uh, so are you integrated with the games where you can get to some of them, some of them. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Some of them have given up, given us API. Some of them it's more like a manual work, which we have.
00:28:24
Speaker
So like your team will validate who and then? Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay. And the ones which have given you APIs, what do you get as a result of the API? Well, everything we have your data, we have what kind of games you have played in a day, how much have you won, what kills or parameters, whichever are related to the game, we'll get everything with your game ID.
Stan's Market Position and ARR
00:28:47
Speaker
And those could go on my profile for like bragging rights. Absolutely. That's also one big thing, which these guys get a unified game profile in Stan. Like you could actually see your PUBG profile, your free file profile and badges. You get badges for achieving certain milestones in the games. Okay. It's net net ecosystem play for a gamer, right? So that the helping gamers life evolve.
00:29:18
Speaker
Understood. Understood. And what is the value of STAN coins sold till date? I can't give you my financial numbers right now. I mean, we are we are then waiting at two million dollars ARR. That's what something which I can disclose. So and predominantly it's through the coins itself. It could be the only like largely coins and there's nothing else. Yeah, nothing else. OK.
00:29:47
Speaker
Okay. Okay. So this year you'll sell about two, two and a half, something like that, million worth of coins, this financial year. Okay. Okay. Okay. Interesting. And where is your audience? Is it an India based app primarily or? Currently in India. Yeah. Okay. Are there comparable companies in the West?
00:30:10
Speaker
Um, not really. Uh, I mean, there's discord, there's, um, there's the games itself. Uh, there will be community apps, tournament apps, but not what Stan is building as such. We don't see that exactly coming out.
00:30:27
Speaker
A community app would be similar to standard, but you're also allowing them to... The creator and fan angle, the custom game rooms, I think these are not existing. This is something unique inside which we saw through YouTube super chats and YouTube chats on the live stream. People wanted to play with the guy, people wanted to... They were ready to spend some money to get into the same game.
00:30:52
Speaker
And this was going across the chats of these creators. And I and my team, the leadership team at Stan, I'm very fortunate to have some really amazing co-founders with me. And we were part of this ecosystem from long. We used to work with these creators very closely in our past experiences. And we could see their fans and gamers wanting to spend, to sort of create, and also lacking that sense of belongingness that they want to make friends, they want to connect,
Background and Evolution of Stan
00:31:20
Speaker
apart from just the game, they have a life after the game, which is a social life. So these are the things which we felt that there's a very unique proposition which can be played upon. And if you go build into a business like it's Bingo, that's where we started up in first place. Tell me about the journey of building Stan. So this is not your first venture, right?
00:31:42
Speaker
No, it's not my voice. So quick intro, it's been like seven years for me in the gaming space itself started as a dev in 2012, 13, my college days, I used to build hyper casual games. And then you would build and publish them under your name or as a.
00:32:00
Speaker
I was a freelancer. I used to give games to whoever's looking for hyper casual beat platforms. Like I've given games to Flipkart when they want to do some gamification on their platform, right? So that's how I started with basic HTML5, Cocos 2D sort of
00:32:22
Speaker
engines where I would code hyper-casual games where, because gamification was exciting, it had just got started. And then I built a large game, which was a very interesting IP, basically a fusion of sports and a very popular game called Bingo, which is Housie or Tambola in like different
00:32:50
Speaker
regions of India, so connected these two things together and built a very unique game. I sold it to a platform. They went ahead and made it live in a very small feeling. I can't give you the name, but a very large OTT player bought it. That's where I started feeling that this is something exciting to build on as a category.
00:33:18
Speaker
After that, I built and scaled my first gaming venture, which was like proper venture, E-War Games. It was a real money gaming platform. You quit your job to do this? Yeah, I heard. Like you were with JP Morgan Chase.
00:33:34
Speaker
Yes, I did. I did a stint for three years at JP. Very interesting time. As a coder, as a software developer, I built some really exciting features and things in the bank. But very boring job because you know how the banks operate. And coming from a gamer's ecosystem and excitement was always on the peak.
00:34:04
Speaker
I could see that gaming industry in India was picking up big time. I used to chat on LinkedIn with a lot of these leaders from the various companies in gaming. And Fantasy, Poker, Rummy were obviously the poster boys and cash cows as well. People were scaling businesses big time. So my obvious choice was to look at sports and gaming together. That's where I started the first game, which I built.
00:34:32
Speaker
called cricket and bingo or run Bola. We had trademarked these two things and sold the game to an OTT player and then I realized that you built a gaming studio basically which was making games for whoever was ready to pay.
00:34:51
Speaker
So it was just me and my co-founder back then, which this is the first game I'm talking about. And then we realized there's something called as game of chance and game of skill, which was something very interesting, which we learned over a period of time by understanding. Why is this distinction important, game of chance versus game of skill? Because it is really, I mean, as per Indian government, you cannot
00:35:20
Speaker
a run wage ring or let's say money in money out on game of chance. That is pure gambling, right? Typical example is let's say a betting sports betting or or team but the which is not a game of skill. It is pure luck. And if you put in money, you are like sort of promoting gambling and India it was not
00:35:45
Speaker
something which was very like it was not allowed right and and the bingo which is Housie or tambola is sort of a game of chance right so we had to realize that how do we make it a game of skill.
00:36:01
Speaker
Right. And then we then we built then I started my first journey like first company big time called you or games in 2019 after JP and all my freelancing gigs. And that was a real money gaming platform of skill games.
00:36:21
Speaker
That's when I really got my hands dirty with understanding the RMG user base and market, how the distribution channels work, what's the user's insights, how do we actually scale it big time. There were a lot of interesting learnings and takeaways from this business.
00:36:46
Speaker
I want to understand this real money in gaming space a little better. First of all, how did you make bingo from a game of chance to a game of skill?
00:36:56
Speaker
We were not successful fully there, but what so I can quickly explain the game. So let's say there's a match of cricket where there's let's say IPL, RCB versus KKR and RCB is batting. So Virat and Kiris Gail are playing and they would hit a six and six is the number which comes as a bingo number and you need to strike off if you have it in your ticket. Okay.
00:37:19
Speaker
So that's the link, how the thing happened. Now, to put in the scale, we added a trivia. Like the moment you strike off the number, we would count it, you know, valid if you actually answer a question, which could be a GK thing like, uh, or, or, or we're at maximum runs, but it was like, just to, you know, plugin.
00:37:46
Speaker
Why do you say this was not successful? Who decides that this is not a game of chance?
00:37:52
Speaker
No, no, no, it was a game of skill. And now after that trivia came in, but like my vision was to take it to a very big stage, right? Like imagine like World Cup is happening and it was a very interesting game because females were not very, you know, involved in during cricket time.
00:38:14
Speaker
But Housie Bingo is something which is very much played in the female audience as well. So that's how our wage was to get more audience to the cricket game. But the platform which we sold to, they did not do it big time. We thought we launch our own platform and then we will do it big time.
00:38:38
Speaker
Right. But when we started Ivar, we started with unique insights. And then when we kept on building added more games, we learned a lot, a hell lot of things, you know, understood what exactly a gamer's mindset is in India and as compared, you know, with respect to real money gaming. We understood that poker, Rami. Yeah.
00:39:02
Speaker
Pokhara and Rami are games of skill or games of chance? They are game of skill. How do you decide game of skill and chance? That's a very important and a unique thing to learn, right? So if you put same guys and give them the same cards or same thing, like if there is exactly the same winners coming out of the game, it's a game of skill.
00:39:27
Speaker
So you would typically see in the tournaments those same guys repeating. Obviously there will be a randomness of what cards you get, but how you play the cards and create those pairs and stuff like that brings in a real skill element there. And people would really, really wager a lot on these games. Fantasy Dream 11 became super, super big in the market and they taught people that
00:39:51
Speaker
You can create a team of 11 and very interesting stories, which we learned from football fantasy, cricket fantasy, and then Ludo, which was again a very unique game in India. We did something revolutionizing there as well. So Ludo was a game with dice, right? A proper game of chance, right? Now we created a Ludo without a dice.
00:40:17
Speaker
Somebody would ask me, you would ask me, how do you play ludo without red eyes? So we created a unique game where the moment game starts, you and me, if we are playing against each other, we get a sequence of numbers, the 30 numbers, 30 to you and 30 to me.
00:40:37
Speaker
We will just play a 30 chance in the Ludo. We have those numbers to play. Now we are on the equal page and I can see, I will get three now, four next, five next, six next, three again. I can plan my moves, right? With which, which pawn in the game to move.
00:40:56
Speaker
Right. And then every step you take with the pawn, you get one point. So it's a score driven Ludo, where there is a unique way of skill at it. And it became super, super popular. And now there are companies who are doing big time in Ludo and very good learnings and e-board days with respect to how to scale gaming platforms on, you know, in the Indian market, how to cater to tier to tier three audiences, very low
Impact of Mobile Gaming and Community Building
00:41:25
Speaker
What is the reason why you call it a gaming platform? Did you release Ludo as a game or like 25 games on one app, right? 25 games on one app. You could put in money and then start playing any game and you will find players to play with, right? So that's how basically a game of gaming platform came in, but it's like a very interesting question. Are you allowed by Google Play Store to publish real money gaming apps?
00:41:54
Speaker
Only fantasy and Rami is allowed now, but if you put other games, you are not allowed. So we were typically operating as a APK. So you would typically download our app from the website.
00:42:08
Speaker
Which is extreme friction, right? Most Android phones... It used to be but... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Correct, correct, correct. Even now, it used to be but it's more like people got accustomed, the real money gamers got accustomed to it because Dream11, the largest player, taught people, right? That's how you do it. So, that's how it's running.
00:42:30
Speaker
So, so the market was already educated before you started that, that helps. Yeah. Well, like the second, third player, maybe third player as a platform. And, but we really solved a lot for, uh, distribution in tier three. Like we had users from like, uh, cities, like, you know, uh, and indoor, like users coming from all over the country and.
00:42:55
Speaker
low-end devices. I think people in Indore will object to being called tier 3. I'm not categorizing them. Indore would be what tier 2. I'm saying tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, all these would be
00:43:15
Speaker
How did you onboard users from beyond metros? I can tell you, and they were using devices which were like damn low-end devices like all these Chinese phones, 4,000, 5,000 bucks which you buy a smartphone with and it was a great
00:43:36
Speaker
success for India market like gaming took off because of these two reasons, right? Like internet became super cheap with geo and mobile phones became super cheap and mobile games came out to be very interesting play. Like before 2016 everybody was talking PC games and that's why the gaming industry was not flying that high.
00:43:57
Speaker
And we used to pick hold of these YouTubers, create communities. Again, community is a very big angle in which to grow your business in gaming and reference. People would refer each other, bring them to the platform. And through the games, we had to really focus on how to
00:44:17
Speaker
how to make the game playable on very low end devices, very low bandwidth internets, right? Some villages also like people were having like 3G, not even 4G back then, right? 2G also people used to play games. So we should, we would test our games on low bandwidth that when exactly is the game breaking, right? To make it possible that everybody is
00:44:40
Speaker
able to play seamlessly. And there was money involved. So a lot of security has to be added in the platform as well, because you know how it is, right? If there's money involved, people will look for opportunities to kind of pull out the extra cash from the system. To game the platform.
00:45:05
Speaker
Exactly, exactly. So this is how these are certain learnings. And interestingly, like look at how distribution happened for you are as well, through your viewers and gamers is something which we really learned and we felt that community fandom
00:45:21
Speaker
Uh, and socializing over games is a big wedge to build on. And that's how Stan got, you know, uh, why, why not, uh, continue in the real money gaming category? That is a big category multiple unicorns. Yeah.
00:45:38
Speaker
But regulatory hurdles were coming our way. We were slightly aware of this GST issue which government was putting like now it's live with the 28% GST. What is the GST issue for people who don't know what it is?
00:45:53
Speaker
So it is basically, let's say if somebody puts in 100 rupees to play in, let's say a platform, they would have to, the platform has to pay 28% to government on that 100 rupees.
00:46:08
Speaker
Right. On the person is only left with like that 70 or 72 rupees to play with. So it's a big hit for the gamer. Now some big players are ready to absorb their head on their own in their margins.
00:46:25
Speaker
but almost a lot of new players or budding players were not ready to kind of financially cater to and absorb all those hits, right?
Transition from E-War to Stan
00:46:37
Speaker
Because some people were actually operating at what, 10, 15% margins. Now, if you add a 28% GST, it would hamper things mad, right? So that is the big reason we also sort of took
00:46:51
Speaker
this, you know, step that we need to move to building something which is a proper business, which works well, builds on scale. And I was seeing this era of gaming where people wanted to play with each other and play with your favorite YouTuber, right? And a lot of content creators were, you know, coming up. So creator economy is something which I feel that is not solved yet.
00:47:16
Speaker
Like if you meet anybody today, like 10 people out of them, at least seven wants to become creator, right? Running a podcast is obviously also a creator sort of approach. It could be YouTube or it could be influencer on Instagram. So we saw there's a very, very big wave of creators come up and a lot of them try their hands on gaming because they know consumption of gaming is high.
00:47:44
Speaker
You would see non-gaming creators playing games on their videos and streams because they know that this video will work, go to the masses because gaming consumption are there. But how to solve for monetization, how to get these guys to make money out of it. So I think this problem statement came out very exciting and that's how Stan got born and we moved ahead from a URL to Stan.
00:48:10
Speaker
Right. Um, and it's a way, yeah. Uh, even was profitable. I assume real money as a business is like, it was like unit economics, positive, like on the platform level, we were positive, but as a company, we were, uh, making loss that time because of marketing. Yeah. Yeah. We were growing and.
00:48:30
Speaker
In gaming, it's like you need to amplify things when it's working for you, right? You need to get as many users as possible so that the numbers go up and then you're typically then turn it into a profit business. So we were doing unit economics vice positive on the platform. And how much revenue were you doing when you shut it down?
00:48:52
Speaker
We were doing like close to a million dollar GMV per month, which is about seven, eight crores in GMV. So and our take rates were close to like 10, 12 percentage. So net one to two crore is what our revenues were in a month that time. Amazing. Amazing. Which is like a.
00:49:13
Speaker
Phenomenally big business to shut down. I mean, we had to take a call, we had to liquidate, we started selling the games, we sold the platform. I mean, it is a big decision, but obviously we as founders had to take a call, how to move forward with it. We had raised some capital from VCs and you don't turn
00:49:39
Speaker
you don't make it a small entity to make small business, right? You're building a business for masses and you have to build, like we were always excited about the scale and growth. And Stan is something which came up to me as a serendipity. And like the guys who are with me in the journey, they planned, they were very excited about Stan. So it happened. And then I felt that this idea is
00:50:07
Speaker
a new generation thing and this is going to take us to the global market and this does not have that RNG angle to it, right? So a lot of reasons where it helped us take the decision. So the idea of a stand came first or the decision to exit EVAR came first? The decision to exit.
00:50:29
Speaker
Okay. I'm still, I want to kind of learn from you how you take that call to exit a business, which is at a 10, $12 million annual GMV. I mean, you're burning money, right? Either you get more people to put in money. So it was getting difficult to raise capital, right?
00:50:51
Speaker
The investors were telling you that there is a regulatory overhang in this sector. We were educating the investors. Investors actually don't have the in-depth knowledge of categories because they are actually investing in various categories. We had a lot of discussions and then we took a call.
00:51:12
Speaker
I mean, it was a mutual understanding. We had a lot of strategic interest to acquire the business as well. One of the leading fantasy players gave us a very good offer, but things went south and we couldn't move forward. But very interesting insights because everybody who comes to acquire, tries to maximize their output as compared to the other persons.
00:51:40
Speaker
I would say phrases like that and getting logged in for many years and so on and so forth. So there was a lot of shifts and then I think the regulatory hurdles were on the way.
00:51:58
Speaker
I think if somebody would have acquired us also would have, you know, felt later that why did we do this because that's the 28% GST thing was very, very big. It has impacted a lot of companies now, a lot of companies have shut down and real money gaming. And then I mean, I started looking at the sports market.
00:52:18
Speaker
how these gaming and socializing happen and Discord is a big product. It's a successful product in the Western market and India is on a declining trend.
00:52:30
Speaker
due to various reasons that it doesn't have anything apart from chatting and creating a community. And it's super complicated. It's not so much handy or localized or bespoke for Indian or emerging market. I'm sure that's why you also don't use Discord. A lot of people have that friction with using Discord. So we felt that there is an interesting
00:52:53
Speaker
opportunity here and gamers is something which we really understand. We understand how because we have been the gamers. I have like built games, played games and myself like looked at in your market and now I think we have really cracked something here because we have organically reached 3 million gamers. We are trending on like number four on the Play Store. We have
00:53:16
Speaker
We're doing a decent business as well. And now, you know, we are really moving fast, getting to as many gamers as possible and becoming the go-to platform for gamers in India. Right. Okay. Interesting. So, the entity remains the same for awards and stands? You shut that down. Okay. We started a new company with a new capital and a new set of investors.
00:53:41
Speaker
Yeah. So, I mean, the fact that you had to shut down your last company, did it make fundraise difficult? No, I mean, there was a decent and like learnings we had. Yeah. I mean, yeah. And 12 million DMV. Yeah. Some of the investors, like we are very, we were very solid executioners and building a business is not like, you know, everything is going to work out for you. Right. And not,
00:54:10
Speaker
not every time it hits the board, right? So investors really value that. And second I have found is, I think there's a lot more maturity. I remember myself in the world days I was a very different person as compared to now. I'm much more calm, mature in my decision. There's a lot of data driven analysis which we do. There's a lot of
00:54:36
Speaker
So, I think businesses are like that. I come from a business family background, so my parents have been into business for my grandfather days.
00:54:47
Speaker
I could really, you know, put analogies in place because we put this fancy word startup and VCs and investors, but net net, it's like you're building a proof that you're going behind the market share. Like there's a market either you're creating the pie or you are getting the share of the pie, right?
00:55:07
Speaker
So, to your question, I think investors are really investing a bunch of people who really understand you, who actually help you get some answers to the questions.
Future Plans and Growth Strategies for Stan
00:55:22
Speaker
I have really good partners in Stan right now. There's General Catalyst from the US, there's Better Capital. There's an amazing bunch of people who have partnered with us in this journey. Overall, I think the vibe has been pretty good. Okay, interesting. How much have you raised for Stan? We had raised $2.5 million last year.
00:55:52
Speaker
as a seed round and that's when these names which I mentioned came in and very soon we are going to announce our next raise. You're planning to do another fund raise. What do you need funds for? What do you want to use them for?
00:56:08
Speaker
I mean, till date, we have been very organically growing. And we do have a product market fit now. We are making money. We have good retentions, which we are seeing in the product. And I think it's the right time to scale the business and get more users in. So marketing is definitely one place where we are going to spend hiring more good talent. We have an amazing team.
00:56:36
Speaker
very fortunate to have these rock stars with me like 30 people sitting in Bangalore and everybody's like giving their best so want to add couple more guys who are really you know want to create an impact with stan so hiring and product and marketing I think pretty standard places where we're gonna spend the fund
00:57:00
Speaker
How will you do your customer acquisition once you have funds? What's the strategy you've thought out? There are various, I mean, there's some standard ways, there are some unconventional ways. Standard is typically those Instagram ads, performance marketing, and unconventional is basically
00:57:19
Speaker
creating those GTMs like, you know, partnering with tournaments and esports, getting more creators, like, you know, and then getting to more communities in Discord, Telegram, wherever these gamers exist, right? And media buying, I think, a good mix of all of these, and whatever works, you amplify that and just keep scaling it, right? I think that's the way you scale it, right?
00:57:46
Speaker
So these, uh, tournaments are, uh, so there are startups which are into this tournament space, right? Like I think rooter, loco, these are, they are more like streaming platforms. So they are, okay. Uh, they are competing with YouTube, right? Okay. They're not doing what Stan is doing. Like we are doing, we are not building another YouTube.
00:58:09
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to compete against YouTube, undoubtedly. Is there a startup which is in this tournament space or is it largely unorganized? It is very unorganized. There's a lot of WhatsApp groups which are running. So that is one big advantage where we are sort of, you know, looking at it. So this could be another space for you to get into, like in terms of tournaments.
00:58:37
Speaker
It's already running on the platform. So like the right go-to-market strategies are this only, like partnerships, adding these games which are working, which games have community, adding more creators, getting more long, you know, that long tail of budding creators. Like we have just started a stan creator partner program where people have applied. There's like 700 applications we have received. So we did stan fan fest last year in Hyderabad. We had,
00:59:03
Speaker
35,000 IRL people attend in three days that was very very successful huge event for us because we had like top 70 gaming creators coming in one place our users the fans they came in attended that event they got exclusive meet and greets and just like how youtube fan fest used to happen but
00:59:25
Speaker
stan fan fest is like beyond that in terms of gaming itself so a huge success so a lot of creators reached out to us so this time we did a stan creator fest in you know in 2023 in Hyderabad again and we had it we had like close to like 150 plus creators in one place and then we opened up for
00:59:45
Speaker
all the budding creators, we made creators talk to each other, what is working, what is not working, sort of educating that. So I think these are the GTMs which are really working for us and we would double down on these. Stan Fanfetch 2 is what is coming up in 2024, where we do a much larger IP.
01:00:03
Speaker
A lot of brands are excited to partner up with this IP for us because the right gaming, TG comes to attend those that event, right? So yeah, I think these are some unconventional ways where Stan is kind of creating an impact and acquiring our users. Do you think earning from advertising dollars is another revenue source for you?
01:00:30
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. Why not? Like we have a, how would that happen? We have a platform. So we could immediately start ads. We could promote other games. We've experimented a little bit on that as well. And it's coming out really exciting. Interesting. But we would be selective about which brands because the conversion should be higher. The audience should like what we are promoting. I think, but yes, advertising dollars would also be in a way to sort of, you know,
01:01:00
Speaker
In a way, one could say that Stan is like the only fans for gaming content creators.
01:01:08
Speaker
apart from all the nudity and the negativity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know how... It's a cleaner OnlyFans. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, OnlyFans is essentially relying on the creators to promote the platform, like all the creators promote it and therefore everybody knows of it. And so in the similar way, you also want creators to come on the platform and they will promote it because it's their self-interest, like they would tell the community that follow the understand.
01:01:37
Speaker
and join my exclusive club on Stan and things like that. Absolutely. Interesting, interesting. Okay, cool. So my last question to you. What's your advice for young aspiring founders? Oh, it's been like super exciting, six years old as an entrepreneur. And
01:02:01
Speaker
I have always looked at the fundamentals of business to be priority one, I think, and that has helped me a lot. Data-driven decisions, looking at the data, understanding how the business is going, what is working, what's not working is very important. And obviously there are a lot of gut feelings which come your way.
01:02:24
Speaker
Network is very important, so build your good network. I think it has helped us a lot, helped me personally, and work on something which helps you stay sane because business turns you insane in a lot of ways. I work out, I tend to do certain things which help me in the parallel world of my personal life.
01:02:49
Speaker
because the right mental health and physical health sort of helps a lot as founders to grow. I think that's something which has come a long way with me.
01:03:06
Speaker
What else? Yeah, I think these are certain things which I really feel some like people lack. I also, you know, was missing out on these fronts, you know, when I started. So if somebody would have actually told me and be patient and not be harsh on yourself. I have been very harsh when I started as an entrepreneur, like crushing it every day and night, like not letting myself sleep. But
01:03:30
Speaker
that's just pure amateur or early days of entrepreneurship. So I think these are the things which if somebody would have sat with me and told me that take it easy, understand the right things, do the right, take the decisions in a manner, build your network. I think these are certain four, five points which have helped us a lot.
01:03:54
Speaker
I'm a bit surprised that you spoke of networking because your products are built for viral growth. That kind of approach is typically the approach of someone who
01:04:12
Speaker
is more of an introvert, you know, who likes to create products which sell themselves rather than the person having a mix of both. I mean, product speaks for itself as well as the product which speaks for itself.
01:04:27
Speaker
will reach that point through all the extrovert activities. Because being an extrovert, being a socializer, gets you the right team, gets you the right funds. I think then you reach the right product. I think that's been my learning. Interesting. Interesting. So networking has helped you in.
01:04:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's me. Obviously, it could be very different for others. I don't know what Zuckerberg's life has been, but from the movie and everything, we know that he himself sat and coded and it became viral.
01:05:01
Speaker
In our case, that's not the thing. You get the right people to work with you and join you with your vision and mission, right? And that's a big way to sort of, like if you're a socializer, if you are a talker, if you are a good salesperson, because founders have to be sales guys every day, right? So that gets you to the right product, which speaks for itself.
01:05:29
Speaker
And that brings us to the end of this conversation. I want to ask you for a favor now. Did you like listening to the show? I'd love to hear your feedback about it. Do you have your own startup ideas? I'd love to hear them. Do you have questions for any of the guests that you heard about in the show? I'd love to get your questions and pass them on to the guests. Write to me at ad at the podium dot in. That's ad at T H E P O D I U M dot in.