Believe it or not! A large number of women who for long had been glued to the daily soaps; especially the ‘Saas-bahu’ sagas have turned towards gaming as the new form of entertainment. Online gaming is the new passion that has hooked the young and old alike, thanks to Zapak, which has revolutionized the Indian gaming market. With over 750 games in its kitty, about six million registered users, over 100 million page views a month and nearly 250 advertisers, Zapak, an Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) company, is India’s largest online casual gaming portal. From content to technology to distribution to merchandize, it has set up a value chain providing end-to-end gaming, a feat none of the gaming portals in the world has managed to achieve till date. With this value chain as the backbone, the company has not only accelerated the gaming trend in the country but also with the Indian online gaming industry estimated to reach $200 million by 2010; the company is sitting on a potential goldmine.

Online gaming is a late entrant in India unlike the U.S., China or Korea, where online gaming has existed since past 5 to 8 years, but the number of gamers here are now on an upward spiral. The participation of 11,000 gamers in last year’s Gamebox National Championship is a testament of the craze and following that Zapak has created with in a year of its launch.

Building the numer uno Brand

Launched on 26 Nov 2006 with an aim to explore the gaming opportunity in India has grown by leaps and bounds in quite a short period and the key to this success has been its first move advantage. Unlike social networking giants such as Orkut and Facebook, who saw a potential for social networking India, U.S. online gaming majors like Miniclip and Bigfish did not visualize much market for gaming here. The low numbers of PC and Internet penetration in India did not excite them. However, that did not deter Zapak from seeing the vision.

“Zapak was launched with a clear vision of creating a market for online PC games and making it a prominent digital entertainment in India. The driving factor for this was the market for such games that we saw in China and Korea, where gaming is the stickiest form of digital entertainment. Fore seeing the growth in PC and broadband penetration in India, we decided to explore market and started Zapak with an initial investment of about $50 million,” says Rohit Sharma, COO, Zapak Digital Entertainment.