Based in Navi Mumbai and founded in 2015 by Yogesh Doiphode and Mitesh Gangar, the first version of their game PlayerzPot was launched in early 2016 through a website coinciding with IPL 2016 which by Indian Fantasy Sports market standards was quite early. Despite being one of the early players, PlayerzPot has only now in November 2020 raised their Series A of $3 million.
Growth Story
By 2017 both the app and mobile version of the website was ready as well, keeping with the IPL schedule. Further based on customer feedback features like instant withdrawals and weekly tasks were added to the user’s Paytm or bank account. This reduced winnings withdrawal time from a day to a few hours. This along with other features helped push the total user-base to 20,000 users by the end of 2018.
Referral Program
In 2018, a referral program was launched as the IPL season started which was considered extremely successful and instrumental in pushing the user-base to 350,000 by the end of 2018. PlayerzPot has a different referral program with a lot in common with multi-level marketing businesses than other Fantasy Sports Apps. Once you have referred a user, you as the referee gets 10% of all funds to bet by the referred user in public pots till the user closes their account. On top of that, you as the referee get another 5% from the referrals if they in turn refer more users to the app. Thus the MLM model has been used here and very effectively if we see the organic user growth numbers, with the players turning themselves into product ambassadors and user recruiters.
The current numbers stand at 2.5 million users with a target of doubling that number in 2021.
In November 2020, the company raised its Series A with a value of $3 million. The funds will be used to work on the products brand, product features, and future growth opportunities which will primarily be into games of skill.
Revenues are expected to increase by 3x in 2020 compared to the previous year. The founder has also claimed an order book or the value of transactions being conducted on the platform has reached Rs.15 Crores by April 2020.
Product
They currently have Fantasy Cricket, Kabaddi, Football, Hockey, Basketball, Baseball along with Quiz, Ludo, Snake, and Ladders and have plans of expanding into real money games like Rummy and Poker. Thus making it evident that the company has already diversified from a core Fantasy Sports gaming company to a platform for Real Money and Casual games.
Most of this expansion came about in 2020 were due to the lack of cricketing events, the strategy for user retention took the direction of casual gaming along with other skill-based real money games and quizzing as the number of sports covered was increased.
The team now, infused with fresh funds, can expect more brand campaigns, game features, and further expansion into Real Money Games but also the hot new category, hyper-casual games.
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