Daniel Tamas, Co-Founder and CEO of Digitap: We have created a mobile gaming social network that in the first month since its launch reached one million users. The investment so far reaches about $800,000
The platform currently brings together over 50 games, WAM.app can also be used on mid-range smartphones.
The Digitap company from Cluj-Napoca has so far invested almost 800,000 dollars for the development of a social mobile gaming network that in the first month since its launch managed to attract over one million users, mostly from Asia and South America.
Currently, on the platform, called WAM.app, there are over 50 games, this being designed to be used on any smartphone, including those with medium equipment.
“Given that the expertise of the team and my staff is related to games, we said to ourselves “let’s rethink the experience that users have when they are on social networks, but still want to play together.” From this point of view, the pandemic helped us and we made a social network where the main objective is to play and increase your profile as a player, it is a kind of amateur sport. With your WAM.app account you can play in several short or long tournaments — a few hours or a few days — and compete against players entering that tournament, and there are currently players from over 30 countries who are on the platform and at the end of each tournament you win some digital coins and in this way, you increase your player profile on the platform. Our goal is to let players de-stress, entertain and socialize at the same time “, said Daniel Tamas, co-founder and CEO during the ZF IT Generation show, in the Start-up Pitch on Digitap.
He, together with Alex Rus, founded the company Digitap three years ago, the idea for the development of the WAM.app project coming at the same time. The two invested about 360,000 euros to start the project and later managed to attract local funding.
“The funding came last November, it was pre-seed, another $360,000 at a valuation of $3 million. Basically, this was the moment when we started to communicate what we were doing and we started to think about a faster growth “, said Daniel Tamaş, adding that the financing was obtained from the Cluj entrepreneur Voicu Oprean, who owns the AROBS group.
“Voicu Oprean is the investor who believed in our promise to make a Romanian gaming social network. We are thinking about the next round of investments in the next period, but for now, we are focused on the development and the evolution of some indicators.”
The WAM platform is now accessible both in the mobile browser and as a mobile application on Android and iOS, being also compatible with middle-class smartphones.
“One of our internal goals has been for the technology we develop and the platform we develop to allow all users to experience WAM even if, for example, their phones are middle-class. For most games in app stores, if those games are called “AAAA”, you need a powerful phone — either you need a graphics card or you need a lot of memory. So we thought about what to do with the rest of the people who are the majority and who want to have fun with friends and family, but do not want to invest in an iPhone for a thousand euros “, pointed out Daniel Tamas.
The WAM platform was launched in the web version at the end of February this year, and in the first 40 days, it managed to attract over 1.6 million users from different countries, mainly from Asia — Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, but also from South Africa, USA, and Canada.
“Most users are from Asia because we focused on this market from the beginning precisely because it is the area with the most aggressive growth at the moment in terms of internet penetration and consumption of this type of content. Average incomes will increase in the next five years in India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand. Another area where we are starting to see activity is Africa, ”he explained, adding that the feedback received so far from users has been very good.
“Finally, they don’t have to download each game, it goes very fast, they can come back in a few hours to continue their game because it is not necessarily a synchronous multi-player game. We wanted to develop a platform that would allow you to play and free your mind during daily breaks. For example, you are on a lunch break or commuting and you are on public transport, or at home in the evening. A registered user on the platform, who has already caught the taste, spends about 20 minutes playing.”
WAM’s business model is based on three monetization methods — advertising, monthly subscription, and in-app payments.
“Ads go very well with this type of content because it offers a viable alternative for users who don’t want to pay whether they can afford it or not. Then the subscription part, which is presented separately on the platform. For those who pay, we remove ads, users get a special status on the platform and content dedicated to them. Regarding the payments in the platform, they refer to the purchase of “tap coins” with which you can continue each level of gameplay”, mentioned Daniel Tamaş.
The WAM subscription fee is $ 4.99 per month, regardless of the country the user is in, and the tapcoins start at $ 1.99 and go up to $99 per package.
“We already have paying users that generate revenue, but this was not what we focused on now in the beginning because we had another goal, namely to see that there is retention and the necessary commitment on the platform, that people understand the platform.”
Digitap is going to analyze and move to the next step of a new financing round, but for now, it is focusing on the development side and on reaching certain performance indicators.
Media contacts:
Company: Digitap World SRL
Contact: Daniel Tamas; Alex Rus
E-mail: daniel@digitap.eu ; alex@digitap.eu
Join social media: https://fbs.wam.app/medium
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wamapplication
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wam.app/
