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Entrepreneur and Chiranjeevi fan, Deepak Gullapalli, Founder and CEO, Head Digital Works, began his company from a modest garage in Hyderabad in 2006, with two rented computers. Now, after its acquisition by the Clairvest Group, and offices in Delhi, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, Gullapalli is steering the company to new heights.
Excerpts:
You started the company in 2006 from a garage, as an online Rummy portal. Why Rummy?
We started the organisation when Solitaire was popular and played by many people on Microsoft Windows. As we knew the popularity of Rummy in India, we thought of creating an electronic version of the game. We were certain that our online Rummy venture Ace2Three would perform well since Rummy has a long history in this country.
Can you encapsulate your growth story?
Until 2017, we were focusing only on our Rummy business portfolio, Ace2Three, now rebranded as A23 (a23.com). After a change in ownership and an acquisition by Clairvest, we had a diversification plan and ventured into fantasy sports, and fanfight.com and explored cricket content as another business portfolio. We were a very profitable business until 2017 from an online Rummy standpoint. Since we are the first online Rummy business in India, we are also the oldest in the country. With all the learnings, experience, and technology expertise, we extended our portfolios into other products as well.
Are specific games and products more popular with particular demographics, in specific city markets? If so, please elaborate.
Rummy is more popular in South Indian states and in terms of market size and business, 60-70 per cent of our business comes from South Indian states.
Meanwhile, In Delhi, the Witty Games portfolio, which focuses on the ‘play for fun’ (not real money) freemium social gaming segment, is the most popular, out of which Teen Patti is the most played game. The reason why we have been successful in how we market our product across demographics in this country is through our customised marketing strategy for each state. It involves state by state marketing basis the customer behaviour in each state.
While the ongoing pandemic has brought doom for many businesses, the online gaming industry has seen a literal boom. Do you see this trajectory continuing when the world passes this crisis?
We do not see this trajectory continuing and we hope that this crisis goes away very soon like any other individual. Having said that, the situation has shown us what the real potential of the market is.
During the last four months, Ace2Three operated very responsibly as we knew that a lot of people were sitting at home and not going to work. At the same time, we wanted people to spend more time than money on our platform. Hence, we launched a lot of tournaments where people could play for free, and for fun.
Going forward, once the crisis or this whole work from home scenario goes away, the business will come back to its pre-COVID status. We see this as a short term boom, and it is not going to last long.