BENGALURU: Payments apps and food delivery platforms are launching games to increase user base and stickiness, with the ongoing cricket World Cup one event where many Indian startups are utilising to ratchet up the number of subscribers.

In-app games, such as Zomato Cricket Cup, Swiggy Match Day Mania, Paytm Games and Tez Shots by Google Pay, are just a few examples. These games increase the time spent on such apps and are relevant for sectors that are transactional, like payment apps and food delivery apps, industry experts told ET.

“As gaming has become a rich source of mainstream entertainment, content-led engagement feature in these apps also makes them stand out in the market among other providers,” said Manish Agarwal, chief executive officer, Nazara Technologies, a mobile gaming firm.

Zomato has started games like Premier League and Cricket Cup. “It also works as an icebreaker between Zomato and first-time users, especially in small towns, who not only get to experience how to order food online but also enjoy the cricket and prediction elements while doing it,” said a Zomato spokesperson.

Paytm is offering a fantasy cricket game, First Captains, which has seen more than 60% of users play the game daily. Tez Shots, by Google Pay, is another virtual mobile cricket game.

“Addition of games to an app like Paytm gives more reasons to users to open the app, thereby driving up engagement. Users also compete in various free games to win rewards such as free movie tickets, flight tickets and goods, providing another platform to cross-sell for the ecosystem,” said Sudhanshu Gupta, chief operating officer, Paytm First Games.

Paytm has found that more than 70% of its users play these games daily. Mobile games are the primary use case and gaming users spend an average of more than 15 minutes on the app, compared to only a few minutes for others.

While some internet companies are layering offerings with games, others have added games-related elements, in the form of quizzes, puzzles, targets and others, to grow customer retention.

Zerodha’s latest initiative, Varsity, which is an app-based educational platform for people interested in stock trading, is relying mainly on this to increase consumer-product interaction. Varsity sets targets for users, and once attained, they can collect points and eventually sit for a quiz.

They are required to score a minimum score across quizzes, based on which they get a final certificate. “The initiative is a recent one, but already we have seen more than 7,000 people and 32,000 have submitted the quiz in the app,” said Karthik Rangappa, vice president, research and educational services, Zerodha.

 

Source:- economictimes