What is an Indian mobile games company doing in China? Ask Alok Kejariwal, the promoter of the online contest and promotions company, Contest2Win.
For, he insists that his company, Mobile2Win, the one-year-old offshoot of his dotcom venture, is not only present in China but doing pretty well for itself.
For starters, M2W bagged the opportunity to make embedded Java games for Siemens handsets last year. Around the same time, C2W also designed a promotion for the soft drinks brand Sprite, which sponsored the Shanghai University fest in China.
Today, M2W has 110 game titles to its credit and, at $3 million, its revenues are double that of its parent company. This year, the company will create 250 games that will be distributed across 35 countries and 55 cellular operators.
Kejariwal believes that "these are wonderful times to be in", as he feels that the mobile phone will soon become the preferred device for gaming. He expects mobile gaming to grow in India too, with individual game downloads being priced at Rs 50.
For C2W, which managed to get the first round of venture funding worth $1 million from ICICI Eventures in 2000, the big break came when Softbank (one of the partner firms of Eventures) came forward and asked them to tap the booming mobile market in China and create content for them. So, in January 2001, under CEO Thota Ranganath, C2W China was started.
"By the end of 2002, we had already done two of the world's largest SMS campaigns for Coke," says Kejariwal. In 2003, Mobile2Win started as a separate company.
Thanks to its gaming business, C2W's revenue is set to touch $8 million next year and Kejariwal wishes to reach out to every unused space. He sees a potential in inflight gaming or gaming at multiplexes and food retail outlets.
"Every space can be capitalised for capturing mindspace," he says.
Recently, C2W also ran campaigns for Lays as well as Domino's in China, where consumers used SMS to win prizes. Domino's (which delivers to 300,000 households per month) consumers could SMS a code to the M2W number and win Samsung notebooks.
"And in both these cases, apart from response for the brands, we provide information like 'time of consumption' which most research vehicles do not offer," he says. With broadband opening up, Kejariwal is itching to get his paws into that space as well.
Clearly, Kejariwal's company has moved from being just a contest designer for brands into gaming in a big way and it could be win-win situation for him.
