Zapak launches Corporate Gaming Tournament, Mobile Games eye socionets

ZAPAK

“In 2008, Zapak will create the gaming market in India - and that will benefit other players too ” - that’s what I mentioned in my 2008 predictions and am glad to see Zapak executing a well thought strategy - targeting the right segment for the gaming market - i.e. corporates.

Zapak is launching corporate gaming tournament (in association with Reliance Money) and is inviting 300 corporates from Mumbai, Delhi & Bangalore to test their gaming skills in individual & team gaming formats.

Why corporates are an apt target?
Lets look at few stats:

85% of online video consumption in India happens from offices. [source]
Work place continues to be the single largest place for accessing Internet - 78% access. [source]
Most of the corporate netizens can be termed ‘power users’ and potentially, the initial adopters.They play a very big role in seeding the viral campaigns (fwd all the youtube links in the name of workload!)

Essentially, workplace is where you have access to high speed Internet and if Zapak can make gaming official, they have a winner!

Indian Gaming Industry: Key statistics
2.8 million gamers in the country
72% gamers are from higher strata (i.e. sec A and B cities); 80% of gamers are from top 8 metros.
99% of gamers are from metros while small towns account for only 1%.
Indian gaming industry though still in a nascent phase, is evolving at a fast pace (@ 94% CAGR)
Mobile gaming contributes 58% of the total revenue.
Other news from Gaming Industry:

Mobile games industry eyes social networking sites
A boom in social networking and a new delivery platform from Nokia offer mobile video game publishers a boost after a slowdown in 2007.
Digital Chocolate, one of the few global game publishers, has put its hit game Tower Bloxx on several networking and gaming sites on the Internet. The game was installed more than 400,000 times in just four months on Facebook. Also note that Indyarocks recently launched gaming portal.

Reliance Entertainment valued @ $3bn
Zapak’s parent company, Reliance Entertainment recently received $100mn funding from George Soros. Also, Zapak launched Zapak Tiny, for 4-7 year olds.