Building a sizable community of users and monetizing it

Have you ever come across a cricket fan who doesn’t have an opinion on team selection or player performance? It would be an anomaly if you have! It’s not surprising then that in a country like India, cricket experts jumped at the chance to showcase their knowledge. And the result?

A fantasy gaming boom in India, with spectators evolving into gamers.

Affordable data prices and an increase in smartphone accessibility, have positioned India as the second-largest gaming market in the world with 250 million gamers hooked to their mobile phones. Many have also attributed the rise of this gaming culture to the emergence of sports leagues like the IPL or pro-kabaddi, which keep sports enthusiasts engaged in marquee events throughout the year. Yet, for Dream 11, India’s biggest sports game, having an established market didn’t guarantee a steady revenue stream, nor did monetizing game-play came easy.

We sat down with CEO & co-founder Harsh Jain for an episode of Building It Up with Bertelsmann, to find out how he and his team of “dreamers” tackled this challenge and convinced its community of 50 million “Dreamsters” to become paying customers.

Here are some excerpts from the podcast which highlight Dream11’s journey from pitch to the platform.

Overcoming the monetization challenge

Harsh and his team had their fair share of hiccups in their early days. In a bid to engage user attention they were guilty of running a daily news feed with polls and trivia, accidently turning their company into a Sports Social Network!

However, once the team realized that the key to running a successful start-up was in solving one problem, they made their winning pivot. They achieved the Product-Market Fit within a year with their freemium single match fantasy model. Today, they have a user base of 50 Million “Dreamsters” and maintain a 30% monthly growth rate.

Harsh’s hat-trick to winning customer trust

“There is no ‘silver bullet’ to winning customer trust.”

However, we believe that there is merit to “Harsh’s Hat-trick”, i.e the three basic principles that Dream11 abides by to build and retain customer trust:

1. Don’t advertise false promises

2. Associate with credible brand ambassadors

3. Partner with trusted industry authorities

Winning consumer trust is a long-haul narrative that spans everything from the brand’s celebrity ambassadors, their social media presence and associations with industry authorities like the NBA or the ICC. However, in the world of real money gaming, the primary goal is convincing customers to park their money on your platform. Harsh insists that in building brand loyalty, the payment process is as intrinsic a step, as celebrity endorsements.

“The easier you make it for users to withdraw money from your platform, the more comfortable they are keeping it there.”

Moreover, Harsh shares that they won the ultimate trust test when regulatory issues had forced them to go the direct download route, and users downloaded their app despite cautionary messages that popped up on their screens.

Staying ahead of competitors & network effects

With the name cricket involved, there was bound to be competition for Dream11. Even though the competitor list continues to grow, Harsh is very confident that Dream11 can retain its users by virtue of network effects, as the fun in such platforms comes from the community of players engaged. Hence, even if competitors improve or replicate Dream11’s product engagement and usability, the users will have to move their entire network if they have to switch to another gaming platform. Dream11, being one of the firsts in the fantasy gaming market, has this massive network effects advantage.

However, Harsh still believes that “users will move if you provide them with enough value” and foresees that innovative features like substituting players mid-match will keep the market competitive.

Scaling company culture

Dream11 didn’t just disrupt the gaming ecosystem, it also managed to shock the world with its ability to maintain a 30% monthly growth average without compromising on its ethos of experimentation. Harsh insists that the key to sustaining growth with experimentation is in scaling the company culture. He aligned the company around five principles — Data, Ownership, Performance, Users, and Transparency, and insisted that all the in-house “Dreamsters” DO- PUT culture first. This data-driven approach not only helped them to understand the user behaviour better, but also made them one of the first in their industry to amalgamate sports with AI.

Tune in to the podcast, here to catch Harsh Jain’s full story and more interesting insights on how he and his team of “Dreamsters” established a 50 million+ user base, and scaled to a billion dollars and beyond, all while battling regulatory/policy hurdles.

Enjoyed the blog or have feedback? Please leave comments and share your thoughts with us at info@bertelsmann.in

Tickle your brain cells with these interesting reads:

Reel in with the real- sports leagues and online gaming
Dream11 amalgamates AI and sports

If you’re interested in entrepreneurship, starting-up and making it big, then we’re the right read for you. Bertelsmann India Investments shares actionable insights on how to build and scale your business. Follow us to stay updated.

We hope you have already subscribed to our Apple chartbuster podcast — Building It Up with Bertelsmann.