'We are the first ones to introduce social games in India'

D Richard de Silva, founder & CEO of Mango Games, is an independent social games developer and publisher of Indian origin but based in California, USA. He sounds excited about the overwhelming response for the beta model of social games, which he introduced in India in December 2011. Before starting Mango Games for South Asian market, Richard spent almost a decade as a venture capitalist in the US funding some internet companies of the Web 2.0 era. Richard was a general partner at Highland Capital Partners, Silicon Valley, California, where he focused on investments in growth stage technology and digital media companies. Dataquest caught up with him on his India visit when he was setting up his Bengaluru office for Mango Games and gearing up for the final launch of the games in May 2012. Excerpts

- D Richard De Silva
founder and CEO, Mango Games

You claim that Mango Games is the first company to have introduced India-specific social games. Why so much focus on India and South Asia?

We have identified India and South Asia as a whole, and this is a very important market for us in our global strategy. Mango Games, founded in 2011, is focused on developing social games for the South Asian market. There are reasons for considering it as place for launching region specific games. The social gaming industry has developed into a multi-billion dollar business globally on the Facebook platform.

India and Indonesia are respectively the #2 and #3 markets in the world for Facebook and the fastest growing geographies for new Facebook users, according to the tracking service AppData. For example, DON is a great franchise and we are excited to launch this game, which is the first of its kind for India. We want to bring the fun of connecting and competing with friends through social games to Indias 40 mn Facebook users by delivering a game with local relevance and global production standards.

Furthermore, as this market is in its initial stage, so cost of acquiring customer is very low here. In coming years, cost of replicating will get high. So we wanted to make the best use of such ripe time.

Where does the Indian social game industry stand in comparison to the global gaming market?

Indian market is relatively behind global markets especially in comparison to the US and Japanese gaming markets. But it is catching up very fast. In addition, till date Indian audience were not offered India-specific social games. Such a huge number of Facebook users gives us a clear indication about the immense potential in the market. But I would say that Indian users are extremely exhaustive. The content which we had offered through beta site for 3 months was consumed by Indian audience within a month. So it is an extremely upcoming competitive market where we have to be on toes all the time in terms of content.

Which are the social games that you have launched in India?

We have just launched beta version of DON in December 2011 and will launch full game in May 2012. DON is based on the famous Indian movie and its star cast. The Indian audience will get a local flavor with international appeal. We are also launching Rummy, another social game in May 2012. We already have 120,000 users in India.

Who is your target audience in India? How do you plan to target them?

Indian gaming market is primarily driven by young and office going male youngsters in age bracket of 18-28 years, unlike the US where middle aged female makes the major share. So, Indian males and monetization is our focus. We will be adopting 3-fold approach to monetize - introduction of classic vertical items and pricing as per local Indian market to ensure easy adoption and penetration; introduction of sponsored items during the game (for example, Nokia is sponsor for DON 2) and will place virtual ads of automobiles, beverages and other items; and will tie up with e-commerce ventures for coupon redemption with discount codes.

We have already tied up with Bookmyshow.com for one game and look forward to more such partnerships.

You announced that Mango Games will have Freemium Model. Please explain.

All the games launched in beta model and later in full game, initial few stages including entry in the game, are based on Freemium model. It means all users can play these premium games till some stages for free of cost. But in advanced stages, users have to pay. As of now, we are still working on the pricing aspect as Indian social gaming market will take time to mature.

What kind of challenges have you faced till now in India?

Initially, registrations and licensing took a long time in starting our facility in Bengaluru. Then our games can be played on iOS, Android, and Facebook platform, so for that the Indian market has miniscule percentage of smartphone users and we do not cater to huge feature phone market of India. Resultingly, we will focus for some time on desktop/PC users more.

How do you plan to compete in India with other international games?

We do not see any competition actually in India at this stage. Games only from English speaking countries are popular in comparison to Chinese, Korean, and Japanese games. And those games in English also have international characters with which Indian audience had no choice till now. But we are offering an Indian flavor, which will definitely be a strategic advantage for us here over others.

Furthermore, most of the competitors are offering flash games unlike us. We are offering games on Facebook platform, wherein we can retain customers/users of game and offer them other games. Therefore we are offering a more attractive model.