Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company.
The company was established in 2012 and we specialise in development of Android applications. I am the Co-Founder of the company. I was a developer and used to develop applications. When we uploaded our first app on the Google Play Store, we noticed the huge number of downloads and how there was so much of potential to earn revenue out of this. Initially, we were working towards development of applications only for Google Play store. But gradually we realised that the market has inclined towards development of games and it had great opportunities to make money. We started with development of runner and puzzle games for Android and iOS platforms. From 2014, we shifted our focus to casino industry and started developing social casino games and real money casino games. Currently, we are working on social casino poker games as well. Apart from this, we are also working on virtual reality platforms. We worked with Maruti for the Auto Expo 2016 and made a game for them on Kinect platform.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing an application.
It depends on how big the client wants the application to be, how complex it is. The game development involves a lot of backend things to be taken care of - licensing, real money, security features. Based on the features the client wants, we are able to provide a time frame for completing the development of the application.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of an application?
For front end development it generally takes 2 months. And since back end development involves a lot of technicalities to address, it takes approximately 6 months.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/outsourcing?
We have a complete in-house team and we do not outsource anything. Our team comprises of unity developers, node.js developers, design team, and creative team who take care of all the functionalities in a project.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
There are very few companies in India and abroad who are working on the casino games development especially the social casino games. The expertise that we possess in terms of game development is what makes us stand out as compared to other companies. Because of our expertise in this domain, companies generally prefer outsourcing such games to our company. Once they start generating revenue from the games, they partner with us and make us their technology partners.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for an application?
It always depends on the client requirements based on which we suggest what platform to build on. Sometimes clients come with upfront suggestions to build on a particular platform.
Out of all the projects that you delivered in last 1 year, how much % of clients agreed with going first with the platform suggested by you?
I would say 90% of the times clients have agreed to our suggestion of working on a particular platform.
Native or Hybrid — which platform is best to use to build your app? What are your recommendations?
We work on Hybrid platform. Since our main focus area is game development, there are a lot of game engines involved in this like Cocos2D, Unity3D which have a lot of features and one doesn’t need to write a code separately for everything. So the in-built features available in hybrid platform help us a lot for developing great games.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of an application?
We work with 2 ways. Sometimes, we sign a contract with the clients as a technology partner. They don’t have any technical background but possess the expertise required for playing games. In that case, they partner with us to be their technology partners.
At times, clients just want to get the game developed from us and we hand it over to them. All the further responsibilities are the clients.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? What are the pros and cons?
We have different models. It depends on the agreement signed between us and our client. If we are working on a resource basis wherein we dedicate resources for that particular project and I have a partnership in the company. In that case, profits are shared when the company starts making profit. At times, we work on a fixed price model. If the client doesn’t want any revenue share, we decide on a set of fixed requirements and timeline and work accordingly.
We know that casino game development is a domain where the ROI is very high because it is coming as an enterprise solution. The pros are that if we can sign the deal on the revenue share basis it is advantageous for us to grow exponentially. In case of fixed cost model there is no revenue sharing so it might prove to be a con for us. Also for the client it is very difficult to set up an entire time and take care of other costs for a project. So they also generally prefer fixed cost model mostly.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement?
We try to take in projects worth atleast US$6000. However, we do not limit ourselves to the budget. We pay more attention to the kind of project it is and how much we will need to invest our resources.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2015?
Minimum was around US$10000 and maximum was around US$120,000.
Which business model do you suggest to generate revenue from applications? Why?
It depends mainly on the kind of application. For these games, I would suggest that the in-app purchase model is good to generate revenue. The spending on such games is very less and the ROI expected is very high.
