Update: As many of our readers have pointed out, and rightly so, Reliance Entertainment is claiming that Zapak has broken even.
Original Story: Reliance Entertainment President Rajesh Sawhney has disclosed claimed that Zapak, the online gaming businesss from the Reliance ADA Group had reported revenues of $3 million for the last quarter, and has broken even. What’s interesting is that only $1 million of the revenues were from advertising: Sawhney told MediaNama that the rest was from other revenue streams like subscription, and in particular – Events.
So it appears that Events are becoming a major component of Zapak’s business: a couple of days ago, the company announced the Zapak Gaming Championship with Gillete Mach 3 Turbo Winner razor as its headlining sponsor, and with total prizes worth Rs. 1 crore. Prior to this, they had organized the Zapak Corporate Gaming Championship, with Timesjobs as the lead sponsor, and gifts as prizes. Zapak claims a registered user base of 6 million users.
What we’d really like to know about, is how much money Zapak is earning any money from in-game sales – are users playing its Massively Multiplayer Online Game paying to upgrade their racing carts, buy avatars etc., or are they just being given upgrades as prizes or for loyalty? The fact remains that while revenues may be coming from the offline component, the opportunity for scale exists on the Internet – online advertising and in-game commerce should be its primary source of income, and that doesn’t appear to be the case. Dependency on offline events alone will limit Zapaks revenue growth – how many events can they do in a year?
This website uses IntenseDebate comments, but they are not currently loaded because either your browser doesn't support JavaScript, or they didn't load fast enough.
55 Comments until now.
Congrats to Zapak team! It is a big achievement.
Good to know that online gaming is catching up in India and Reliance ADAG group creating a successful business model in online gaming.
What is more interesting is Marketers move towards digital advertising. Using Zapak online platform, Marketers are increasing their brand awareness and customer acquisitions.
Manjunatha KG
Managing Director
Aghreni Technologies
Considering the current scenario, Unless a “Break-up” of revenue is announced, nobody is going to trust/believe this Press Release.
Moreover it should have been “Zapak claims break even in this quarter” and not “Zapak Breaks Even”
i think this is a considerable achievement for Zapak and particularly for Rajesh, Rohit and team. Now, what is interesting is that it takes 3 million a quarter for Zapak to break even – meaning that their burn (cost) per month is 1 million or 5 crores. Smaller start up’s like ours – games2win have costs that are less than even 1/10th of Zapak and therefore by following the same revenue traction will easily become highly profitable soon!
Making a claim that cannot be verified is a useless statement of PR and Nikhil.. I think you’ve been had!
Any non-listed/non-public company that makes claims of financial nature must be forced to either publicise their accounts or refrain from making claims.
After Satyam, the statement “lies, damned lies and statistics” should be changed to “lies, damned lies and audited financial accounts”.
Interesting. I wonder how the advertising revenue compares with advertising revenue for the previous quarter.
mr.mobyte is correct i think.
my friend in zapak tell me that the website is not getting money as website is not having the people to play and therefore their closed 1 office in bangolore i think. even there is no money to pay mobile bills.
she tell me about product people play poltics with enginering with managemant so the website is bad.
i think games2win.com is beter website then and those people do not lie.
Zapak is not only a dotcom like yours but they also have retail business like gameplex & CD distribution which definitly requires high investments
Ahmed – I dont agree with your argument, simply because both companies are ONLINE game companies with the mission to create and monetise online game audiences. Games2win does it using pure play Internet, while Zapak may adopt brick and mortar routes. What is finally of consequence is market share – take a look at the comScore 08 data – games2win.com recorded a 5 million unique visitor count and secured position no 74 global rank, whereas Zapak recorded 1.2 million unique visitor count and secured a 280th global rank. Hence, it may have been wasteful on Zapak's part to go gameplex and CD route way rather than pure Internet like games2win – since online is the most frictionless and scalable way to build traffic. In fact games2win.com to date has not even spent Rs 1000 in online advertising – simply because we believe in the concept of pure content attracting audiences (just like Yahoo, Facebook, Miniclips etc)
Alok as per my knowledge Game2win generates 15-20mn PVs a month and that too spread across various countries. With such low inventory and ridiculously low CPMs with ad networks which you use, I dont see you making profit even after spending 1/10th of what Zapak does.
Ashish – unfortunately i dont think you understand how websites are monetized today. Its no longer about PV's (especially since most 2.0 sites are now in Ajax that dont generate PV's) – its about user engagement and more so user Numbers! Please visit – http://www.games2win.com/corporate/games2win_oct0...and download the comScore October sheet of 'online gaming and gaming' – you will understand where games2win appears in the global markets and also our relative position vs. Zapak. Let me give you another perspective – its better to have 15-20 mn page views in a US rather than have 150-200 million PV's in India for 2 simple reasons a) CPM's in the west are 5-10x of India, but more importantly b) FILL RATES are almost 100% in the west whereas in India its a massive struggle to sell inventory, resulting in sub 20-25% fill rates. Finally, who said the business model was about ONLY advertising? The real money in online gaming is making CONSUMERS PAY for micro transactions in game by buying small items and avatars – Just wait and watch what we do with our MILLIONS of Unique visitors from US/Canada and Europe who have pre paid paypal accounts etc…..
How much revenue is that for a month at 15-20 M PVs?
even at $1 CPM it comes to around US$15k per month. So they cant break even with just advertising revenue. They need to have alternate revenue sources.
15-20 million PV's = 60-70 million ads since one page has 1 north, I east and 1 south ads. Next, when the game starts, you have a pre loader, then mid rolls and finally post rolls. Also, 1$ CPM??? are you talking about India or the US? Now, for some interesting numbers – last month, we delivered 250 million ad units, since more than 50% of our games are played 'offsite' and we monetize using Inviziads ( see http://www.inviziads.comfor more info) – i hope the math seems to be making some sense now :-)
Are you claiming that you did more than $250K in revenue last month?
Nikhil,
I have a suggestion. You can probably introduce a feature called "Goli Meter" and users can rate the "Goli quotient" of the Press Release and interestingly, few comments too :p
@Alok
You must understand that this blog is widely read by Internet guys who knows the pain in raking in $250K. Almost all of us know that its a false claim. You might wanna think twice before claiming that this site of yours generate 35% of Rediff's revenue . What are you talking boss???
Alok as per your calculations ($5CPM), you must have made US$1.2mn last month. You mentioned that your burn rate per month is close to US$100k (1/10th of Zapak) – you are already a big profit making business then why did you mention that we will be highly profitable soon. Either you are making less than US$100k per month or you are spending US$1mn per month – come out with the truth please. Also inviziads is a big failure ike we all know.
Alok – no point mentioning theortical things. Also we run a fairly big entertainment portal and we know the autheticity of ComScore. ComScore wont give you revenues. BTW we get US$3.5 CPM in INDIA – I am not surprised that you dont know this because of your non-exitence in Indian market. We also sell 70% of our inventory at this rate. Regarding your business model, you have been befooling everyone including your investors for long now. You spend 50 lakh per month as per you and your revenue is definitly not Rs.50 lakh per month again as per you then what crap numbers you are giving everyone. Come out of this self illusion.
I would like to see Zapak's view on the comment that they are pure plaay ONLINE company – I see they have over 50 gaming cafes all over India and big CD distribution network.
It seems that Alok is generating numbers from planets other than earth as well – truly amazing eneterpreneur. I think Alok's revenue would surely be $250k per month but it has to be Zimbabwe Dollors for sure :-)
Ashish – I appreciate your comments about 'fooling my investors'. If this is to be a personal exchange of compliments, I would like to know who you are? Why dont you give me your portals name and your designation – let me also help contribute to YOUR history and success stories! its only fair that when i am transparent with my name, company and detailed charts and numbers, so also the audiences on this blog and I get to know you. As regards my company's detailed perrformances, we regularly hold investor and analyst meets at our office at 42, Film Center – Tardeo, Mumbai. I would love to invite you for the next one so that we can show you real orders from Indian clients, what CPM's we are getting etc etc. Its interesting that not only have i managed to raise private equity 7 seven times in the last 10 years by 'fooling investors' like Clearstone, Nexus, ICICI, Softbank, Siemens and Silicon Valley Bank, but I have also 'fooled' The Walt Disney Company that bought out Mobile2win in China!!! Hmmm…. I'm serously contemplating 'fools2win' :-)
Ashish – Read the string of these posts carefully. My original comment was to compliment Zapak and its management on breaking even and then point out that smaller burn companies like Games2win will reach profitability soon. Of course we dont make 1.2 million US$ a month! We have the impressions, but lots of the impressions from China, Latam etc are not getting monetized. We are building sales representations in specific markets and thats when our revenues on all our inventory will kick in. Its already begun in China. We know have our first employee in the US. That however doesnt take away from the fact that we have a very low burn rate and more so, 4 times more traffic than Zapak!! This combination makes revenue traction and profitability for games2win a very near term goal. I am also impressed by your judgement of "Inviziads' being a failure as 'everyone knows' – I would like to know who this 'everyone' is – In my world, more than 10 International Ad Networks, Viacom etc seem to be mightly pleased by Invizi. I guess they are not so important or relevant amongst the people you are refering to!!
I never claim that our revenue are 250k a month. I was indictaing the potential of the monetary value of the inventory we control
Alka – read my posts above – I am never claiming 250k revenues. Its the potential of the Inventory we have
Thats the reality Alok – you will never be able to monetize your self claimed 250mn inventory. If it was that easy then you would have alreayd been doing that and not waiting for Jesus christ to take birth again. If you are doing so well in every business then why is taking you so long to earn even US$100k per month? However I must appreciate the fact that you have really grown your business well and in a very sound manner. Its good to know that your numbers are looking good but everyone will continue to have doubts over your monetization capabilities for games2win.
Also on one of your earlier comments about US CPM @5x of India – I have been buying lot of inventory in US & UK and I use MochiMedia for some of my clients – I am able to buy inventory for US at US$1.5
I am surprised to see this unnecessary debate here. Alok you should not be defending yourself here. I have been tracking & writing about internet from last few years and very well understand the hard work Alok has put in all his businesses. Mobile2win (now sold), Contest2win & Games2win are fundamentally strong businesses and knowing Alok's calibre, I am sure he has some great plans to turn his business profitable. Coming to the original story about Zapak, it is very surprising to see the different approach by so called competitiors in this category. While Games2win has built a global portal with some distinctive content, Zapak is a pure Indian portal categring solely to Indian users which anyone can make out by just spending 15 minutes on the site as all its section, promotions, branding is catering to Indian users and thus appealing to Indian brands who are making a beeline to advertise there or associate themselves. I am not surpirsed that Zapak make $1mn from advertising as we can see brands all over the site sometimes overpowering the actual content and maybe user experience. (contd in next comment….)
(contd…..) It seems that Zapak has never focussed on international users whereas I have read alot about their international forays in late 2008 – I am looking forward to that.
Alok I think you should not actually compare yourself with Zapak as your revenue models will be completely different from Zapak due to the usage patterns. My friends tells me that Zapak charges Rs.5 lakh for a shosh on the homepage for 1 day which is not a small amount. So getting pure Indian traffic is in a way helping Zapak to sell itself at high premium which obviously games2win cant do. But with 4 times more visitors that Zapak, they can surely rake in numbers when it comes to generating inventory which can definitly be sold with some focussed sales.
Lets just put end to this debate and congratulate both Zapak & Games2win here as they are jointly doing great online businesses and its very interesting to see them growing further.
All the best guys
I m surprised why Alok needs to give such clarifications!!off course you should correct others if they are wrong in stating their views and opinions ..also it seems ppl are not reading the threads and taking some personal grudge against this gentleman..i just happened to be on this news and went through the comments..Alok actually started congratulating Zapak Team for their feat and then all of sudden it turned into a two -way fight(literally) also it s very clear that he s more comfortable in putting all those numbers than people who are actually raising doubts!! hope good sense prevails and lets welcome the competition between Zapak who are in better position after breaking -even and Contest2win..All the best
Am sure John P is Alok using another nick to post. The whole (anything)2Win suite of properties are pure faff.
Walt Disney has truly done a great job in our neck of the woods. Their UTV investment is going to really blow their mind. Wonder how they are doing with M2W in China…
Sure Ashish (the anonymous) – I am sure you have done a much better job with the entertainment portal you run and given all the 'blunders' Disney is making, you could probably buy out Disney in the next year or so….
So Alok you got 250mn impressions last month – then why did you claim 150mn in your article in ET yday? Anyways guys here is the inside story – All games2win games spread across the internet generates approximately 70-80mn impressions per month which is true but one thing which Alok is not telling upfront is how much of that is sold – 95% of the inventory on Inviziads is unsold so it will only show games2win advt. 100% of Games2win India, china and few other countries is unsold. He is at most selling 7-8mn inventory per month in US & few other countries only through networks. His monthly revenues is in the range of US$10-15k for games2win. Thats the actual true story – I am sure Alok is going to get mad reading this and will try his best to counter this but I cant give you more accurate numbers than these.
Ask him to give access to his inviziads report along with games2win ad impressions (sold vs unsold) & he will never come back to this site and post his comments.
Also please dont ask me how I got this exact information – its very easy to get BTW if you have got friends ;-)
This story is about Zapak, wonder why everyone is piling onto the _2Win businesses. The fact is that most internet business models in India are still suspect, no one is making significant sums of money, the ones that claim they are.. arent believed.
India is still in the initial phase of internet which means sites that offer ..
- Speed: communication, information (news, finance, search, wiki, shopping)
- savings: travel tickets, ebay, online shopping
- convenience: services as above, banking etc
are the ones that will have a faster route to success in the current environment.
I think the whole entertainment, social networking, gaming businesses are still 2 years and another 20% penetration away…
Can we have some insider from Zapak also throw some light on the truth.
Alok please don't take all these allegations to heart also you must remember that inflicting self abuse is still not legal (just incase).
In my tenure in the internet industry i have seen that most of the numbers shared by portals are all faff and schpeel. However, the original numbers of G2W will be lower than Zapak (for sure), but all know that Zapak has taken a beating in the last few months and now they are struggling to pull up their socks. [G2W may be doing it for years].
Can somebody ask all these head honchos to authenticate their numbers from a common body !!
Hmm.. sad sad trail of comments. Cant help but comment, Alok – u started it! ha ha! Why would you pile on to Zapak's news to promote your model.
Anyway cheers and best of luck to all! Do well Zapak and Games2Win – Indian commerce needs your successes.
This is for all the so called learned commentators in this debate :-
A stranger was seated next to a little black girl on the airplane when the stranger turned to her and said, "Let's talk. I've heard that flights go quicker if you strike up a conversation with your fellow passenger."
The little girl, who had just opened her coloring book, closed it slowly and said to the stranger, "What would you like to talk about?"
"Oh, I don't know," said the stranger. "Since you are a Black, do you think that so-called President Elect Barak Obama is qualified for the job?" and he smiles.
……
"OK", she said. 'That could be an interesting topic. But let me ask you a question first :
" A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same stuff – grass – yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns out a flat patty, and a horse produces clumps of dried grass..Why do you suppose that is?"
The stranger, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence, thinks about it and says, "Hmmm, I have no idea."
To which the little girl replies, "Well then…what makes you qualified to discuss President Barak Obama… when you don't know shit?" :-)
Just a word of caution: while we encourage debate and appreciate discussions at MediaNama, please ensure that your comments are not against a particular individual and personal – i.e. make us liable for defamation. We prefer not to moderate comments, but will have to if we think something is defamatory and/or personal.
Please keep the conversations civil.
I love this! So Mr. Insider, what will you do if I publicly prove that games2win+ inivizads impressions = 250 million ad impresssions? this is very exciting! as far as 'never coming back to this site is concerned' – lets see who is in this position!
This is gonna be great – watch this space!
Alok yes please do. Give access to the reports to everyone. Also we will see that 95% of the inventory served is in-house. This is exciting. It will be great to see your reports. Also please share your last month's revenue report. I challenge you Alok. Looking forward to a link in your next post. We want access to online reports and not some fabricated excel sheet please. Let me see now if you return here and post it,
haha – now you shift the focus to my revenues!! make up your mind my friend….in the post just before you didnt believe that we generated 250 million ad impressions?! Ad impressions summary coming up on Monday! and dont worry, its no excel sheet – its the zedo report of games2win…
Surprise!! Jan we did 279 million impressions!!! check it out here – http://www.slideshare.net/gueste9d67f/games2wincom-ad-im...target=”_blank”>http://http://www.slideshare.net/gueste9d67f/games2wincom-ad-im...
its an official Zedo report. If you want to discuss revenues, come by the office – i will be happy to walk you through all the details – just mail me at alok@games2win.com
The long URL got garbled on the post – check out this URL – http://tinyurl.com/b7f6gd
I still dont believe you got 250mn impressions unless you have some real proof :-) – Like you, I also have a website called fraud.com which generated 132 billion ad impressions in Jan. Dont believe me then here is the public proof (as per you) – http://tinyurl.com/adbur9- see it for yourself – dont do cheap photoshop stunts and share zedo username & password if you dare.
Why are you ducking the question on your revenues. Accept the challenge the way you accepted about ad-impressions. Stop making fool of yourself. I had nothing against you personally and was seriously sharing some data which your employee has given me. Ensure that you share the same fake data internally as well to avoid such emabrassment in public.
My friend, why dont you send a mail to roy@zedo.com – CEO and founder of Zedo and ask him about the authenticity of the report I put up. i was waiting for you to claim that my report is false and saved this surprise bit for last. This is exactly i put up a Zedo report rather than an internal report. I am writing to him separately so that when you write to him, he will respond. I guess now you will revert by saying that Zedo doesnt exist and even Roy is a fakeperson :-) :-)
I think a lot of you guys trying to take a trip of Alok have been in the internet space too long. It's made you sound very bitter, negative and like lowers. Hardly the face to present if you truly believe in the medium and want to to sell it well. Even a no-hoper site on technicals, like exchange4media.com has grown to be bigger that $100K a month in revenues. All from a user base of 30,000 and opageviews under 500K a month. MAybe you guys should be learningf rom its founder Anurag Batra. He follows the traditional media model to sell, with lots of wining and dining thrown in. But its working.
ppl i think overall Gaming sector is looking up….all around various reports point 2 same…chk dis:
http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-maybe-mobile-gaming-ha...target=”_blank”>http://http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-maybe-mobile-gaming-ha...
though gain they are quoting ComScrore….many ppl have doubts on same…
Let Zapak or G2W do what they feel is best to ride the wave….fair or foul means….
dhandaa hai par gandaaa hai ye…
cheers!!
sorry guys missed correct URL: http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-maybe-mobile-gaming-ha...target=”_blank”>http://http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-maybe-mobile-gaming-ha...
I think there's a fundamental difference between the games on Zapak and Games2win. The games on Games2win borders on pornography and it's a site where I wouldnt let my kid on. As an advertiser I wouldnt ever want to be associated with a site like G2W, so I guess adnetworks are the only way they'll monetise their site. The quality of games on Zapak are good quality games and I guess both of them should be categorised in 2 completely different genres.
Alok, I read through the entire thread and I must say that the press release was clearly a way of PR play by zapak. Also the comments are just a cheap way to get the numbers out of you, may be this will help some people to decide what is the best strategy for them to go ahead. After so many strategic changes in zapak's website's revenue model I seriously wonder what's wrong.
Anyways, you don't have to respond to such stupid comments by people earlier any sensible reader will understand and filter out the irrelevant responses.
And well, regarding revenues, few of the world's most profitable online games companies thrive on User Purchase related revenues (eg poker) which is not legal in india. All the best with ADs!
haha… thanks my friend, these tricks are not new to me. Nor does it bother me to reply to these amateurs, coz its always a case of building positive PR thru controversy…old tricks learnt the hard way :-)
I'm Rajesh Rao, CEO of Dhruva Interactive, the first games company in India. We have been making games for the last 12 years.
In all the talk and raging debate about PV and CPM and comscore, etc… I want to make pretty fundamental point. Gaming is really all about the 'experience'. Gaming endears to consumers because of fun & engaging gameplay, and in the online space it goes on to include online competition and community. What's that? gameplay? those of you who played 'snake' or 'bounce' on nokia phones, 'solitaire' or 'tetris' on the PC know what that means. The most successful game sites are about visitors who come back for more… be it miniclip, pogo, kongregate, bigfish… why? cause they have great games to play with great gameplay value, driving consumers to come back for more.
Here's my argument. There is actually no need for an Indian gaming portal unless a) it delivers a unique, sustainable, gaming experience with Indian social-cultural context with great game-play and/or b) it addresses the vernacular demography who cannot dig English. Our sites today are doing neither. Delivering Indian themed / topical quickies with low gameplay value; games in which ads are more prominent that the gameplay, or portals using big ticket adverts/publicity/events to attract consumers to a pretty vanilla offering (in English) are sufficient to create a loyal, vibrant consumer community. Our portals have to create or deliver sustainable gaming experiences that can pull consumers back for more.
Every successful gaming portal worldwide is about the great games they have… once we get that and invest in that, meaningful revenues – be it advert, item sales, subscription – will follow.
sorry that had to read as: … offering (in English) are NOT sufficient to create a loyal, vibrant consumer community…
Are you saying that Zapak is not successful and not in the list ?
Well then, you are a frog in the well. Zapak has more than 8 lakh gameplay in one day. Do you take back your word. The world is still of page views