According to a recent study done by KPMG and Google in India, the gaming industry is currently estimated at approximately $0.6 billion, of which online gaming is approximately $0.37 billion. This shows that online gaming segment has a great scope in India and more than 8% of the total games developed in India are casino based games like Online Rummy, Poker, etc. Rapid & affordable internet penetration with good data rates and advent of powerful smartphones in the sub Rs. 15K~20K range is adding more fuel to the online gaming sector.

Few months back, the lottery and gaming conglomerate Sugal & Damani Group, announced the launch of Khel Group, aimed at becoming India’s largest online gaming platform. Khel Group will be the parent company with two of its own online gaming portals called Khelplayrummy.com offering online rummy and the newly launched KhelChamps, offering fantasy sports and gaming. Khel Group also has Pokerstars.IN currently operated by Sachiko Gaming Pvt. Ltd., that has an exclusive partnership with the global entity – The Stars GroupKhel Group looks at acquiring a substantial market share in this segment in the country.

We had a telephonic interaction with Naveen Goyal, CEO of Khel Group regarding the online gaming market [KhelPlayRummy, PokerStars], player segmentation, etc. Below are the edited excerpts of the interview

Can you give a brief introduction of the Khel Group ?

The journey began in 2012 with the intention of providing interesting online platform for players of Rummy. It is one of the most preferred card games of the nation, played extensively within family and friends. The idea was to make this available on the online space where more and more people could join to play and network. The market dominance was in the South, so we promoted there first.

Over the last 5~6 years, the company has grown steadily and has put a lot of emphasis on value creation and entertainment for its users. KhelPlayRummy now has a brand presence and players recognize it, and love to play on the platform. The trust and brand loyalty are the key things we have created since the launch. In 2018, we did a joint venture with Pokerstars and launched online poker in India Pokerstars.in. In January 2019 we launched fantasy sports app KhelChamps and are in the process of launching some more games within the real money gaming space very soon. All our operations are based out of Mumbai and we have a tech team based out of Delhi.

What are some of the core USP’s of KhelPlayRummy and how different is it from other platforms with respect to pricing, the interaction with the players, etc. Can you throw light on how do you sustain player interests and loyalty on a long-term basis ?

There are several players in the market and we are not competing with the biggest players. We believe that great product and focus on player’s experience will create more value addition. We have therefore focused on consumer entertainment rather than extracting more money from players. There is also a large emphasis on responsible gaming.

We have the fastest withdrawal process in the market – next day withdrawal, that doesn’t exist with any of the competitive brands. For players that have completed KYCs and have built a play history with us, we have instant withdrawals as well.

The third distinct advantage that we have are the ‘large amount tables’ that only exist with KhelPlayRummy and not with others and the kind of user-stickiness systems, decision making, Unb systems which is also unique. This involves a lot of statistical, analytical and decision-making processes. These are few things we have implemented which are unique from the market perspective.

Over the course of time we were the first company to launch rummy gaming in an app and after that all others followed.

Can you comment about user segmentation and how multiplayer gaming is helping to maintain the stickiness ?

Rummy players always used to play offline in a multiplayer format setting from a very long time. With the advent of online gaming, multiplayer format has led to consumption pattern changes. It has become a way of entertainment or passing the time, say while travelling in train for instance. So this becomes the mode of entertainment and getting some thrill out of it by, say, depositing some money and playing.

Having said that, we do a lot of innovation on how to design a game where people can play with one hand. This is because mostly people stand and travel in the train with one hand holding the handle, so the one-hand game is preferable.

In terms of segmentation there are various ways of looking at it, Geographic is one. Predominantly Rummy is majorly in the South market. North is developing and so is Gujarat and West Bengal [having said the East market is still very small compared to the others].

There is a small percentage of players who are on iOS devices and playing but they generally play bigger amounts. Within the Android range the biggest segment of players would come from people using phones within the Rs. 15K-20K range. Xiaomi and the mid-segment phones have penetrated very well in India and this is where most of the consumers are coming from.

Are player interactions possible i.e. Can an expert player interact with other players and provide them guidance or vice-versa ?

It is important to be cautious and avoid any kind of fraud that may happen if players interact while the game is on. There are initiatives that can be encouraged where the experts or brands can educate the novices. Practice games are available on our app. If you start our app you will notice three options to start with – Cash game, Practice game, & Tournaments. Another advantage of our app is that, we tend to analyse the games of players who play practice games and on and off we do pick up players, connect with them and educate them.

We also pickup games of players who are losing amount above a certain benchmark. Our back operations team then connects with them and educates them. This is also a part of responsible gaming.

Is there anything you do with respect to content since the game exist in multiple languages e.g. education via content, etc.

Firstly, our app is not yet in regional language but the regional language app would be launched soon. But all the content is in regional dialects – all the communications with the regional players, the marketing communications, retention communications etc. is generally in regional language. The reason why the move of the regional language app was delayed is because it is more of an action-based rather that a content-based app. Basically, we all know what a drop, sought or play button is. Hence it is more action based as all the content is language driven.

Educating the players via email in vernacular is not something that we are doing currently, but it is an idea we can always think about. The way we have been thinking is it is best to connect them in an interactive manner whether through WhatsApp or through a call. We have operations setup for outbound calls where we connect with players and explain them about how they have done.

Since you already have the user statistics, how exactly you try to retain the user to the platform across both professional and novice users ?

Retention is looking at the behaviour of players both in terms of amount they are playing, the time they are investing, the number of games generally played by them, the number of times they play the game, etc. Everyone has their own frequency in terms of day and time and this is something we capture in our system.

Our operations team tries to connect with the players at an appropriate time using the relevant channels which has the highest probability of them seeing those messages or picking up the call. We have also developed our own system where we capture such behaviour. We see that some of the players potentially will draw and capture some other events and connect with them appropriately. Being in touch with players in real time and connecting them in real time is the key. For example, the moment someone is depositing and their deposit is failing, we immediately try to connect with the customer and see what has gone wrong and help them. So it is these small things that we look into in order to make the experience seamless.

Do you use Machine Learning algorithms to understand user behaviour and decide what action needs to be taken ?

We are not yet at the machine learning stage, but yes, that is where we want to be. But we are doing the basic statistics and data churning. We aspire to keep improving each day and use machine learning algorithms to understand players and their behaviour in the future in order to give them the best experience.

Does KhelPlayRummy team use Robotic Process Automation [RPA] for testing the game ?

We have robots which simulate players for testing purpose. Robots help us in gauging the system tolerance in case of heavy usage. For instance, in case 1000 or 10,000 players start playing at the same time, we need to understand the system’s capacity and functioning.

Events may happen at the cusp or within a fraction of a nano-second and these things need to be checked constantly. We undertake some manual testing too, where there are scenarios which cannot be automated.

There’s an interest for Poker in India, but not many people are well versed with it, how do you plan to educate people as audiences are different for Rummy and Poker ?

Pokerstars has a learning platform called PokerStars School where online and offline initiatives are undertaken to educate people on how to play Poker. There are a lot of things in the pipeline in terms of getting into real education, creating and nurturing the market. Because of the regulatory system in India and the way people perceive poker, which is changing quite rapidly, we are hopeful that in the next couple of months we would be rolling out few of the strategies.

Do you think there would be any regulatory hurdles as far as poker is concerned and when exactly do you think those will be resolved ?

From a regulatory perspective, it is neutral which is why all companies are flourishing in India. We strongly believe that poker is purely a game of skill and it is fairly accepted that way in India. We aren’t worried at all from a regulatory perspective. It is more about how to launch strategies in a manner that are expected and perceived by the market and stakeholders.

Under Khel Group, you have Khel Champs that would be offering games of cricket, Kabaddi tennis, football etc. How do you plan to stay ahead of competition in this highly competitive segment ?

We at Khel Champs give amazing user experience to the customers. As we move forward, we would be integrating functionalities in terms of new variations of games that do not exist in India. Some exist in international markets but not in India. We are doing innovations combining close variations within the sports fantasy genre. So there would be newer variations coming up in the future.

At the restructuring level our vision is to create one singular platform where we will be able to offer all sorts of games to the player. Such a platform doesn’t exist in India.

How do you plan to market the cricket or the other apps that are in the pipeline since there are other brands with huge funding and large fan following ?

For KhelChamps, there is a particular budget allocated for branding that needs to run specially during the World Cup. KhelPlay, on the other hand, is already existing in the market and players are already aware of the brand in the gaming community. In the past 5~6 years, we have extensively invested in the brand in terms of player acquisition.

When we do player acquisition and go out in the media, there is a small percentage that convert into players and remaining do not.  People know that the brand exists, they know that we are a stable company, hence it is easy for us to go out in the market and explain that we are a trusted player.

Do you plan to have a single app strategy where users/players can download Rummy, Poker, Cricket, etc. games on the click of a button ?

When we say platform, it is a single platform where the player management is seamless which means the player has one wallet whether they are playing on sports fantasy or rummy app they will be using the same wallet profile, login, and everything else will be done only once. I do not know if we would have a single platform with different apps, but there could be a possibility of doing so at a later stage.

Since we have started the restructuring with the thought of single platform, we would be coming up with ways in which we would make player experiences easy in terms of downloading the app and letting them know that this is one company and one platform.

We thank Naveen Goyal for his time and sharing the insights with our readers. If you have any questions for The Khel Group, please leave them in the comments section…