Chinese gaming company, Youzu Interactive has just ventured into India, as the company has recently announced the opening of its office in Pune. The company has placed Anuj Tandon, who has been associated with Nazara Games in the past, as the CEO of the Indian division.
According to NASSCOM, India’s mobile game downloads are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 58 per cent over the next five years, growing from 1.6 billion downloads in 2016 to 5.3 billion in 2020. Youzu plans to launch multiple local Indian strategy games in 2017.
Talking to AnimationXpress, Tandon said, “Public listed company in China and we have a market cap of close to $3.7 billion and more than half of our revenues are global. In a way, a part of our strategy is to start expanding globally. We started that by acquiring Bigpoint last year for $89.68 million and the second step in that strategy was to open an office in India.”
Founded in 2009 by Qi Lin, Youzu Interactive develops and publishes mobile games and also has a massive online gaming platform called ‘GTarcade’, which the company will be promoting in India as well and check for traction, mentioned Tandon.
It would be the first time that a foreign company is looking forward to create local content in order to tap into the fast-growing market and that might as well work for them.
“We will follow a balanced strategy, we believe that the Indian gaming (mobile) market will mature in a year or year and a half and that is our belief and that is why we are taking a bet on India,” mentioned Tandon.
The company’s Pune office has already begun operations and is hiring talents. The plans are to launch three to five mobile games this year. Strategy and casual games would be the genre to start with and then as the market evolves, they plan on delving into more mid-core genres
What about monetisation?
“Mostly, in-app purchases, however it depends on various factors. If the genre demands video monetisation, we will go for that.”
Although the company does not plan to pursue brand integrations at this point, they are not ruling out the option.