A large majority of citizens are currently in self-isolation, spending time at their homes as the government-imposed nationwide lockdown in India due to the public health emergency posed by novel Coronavirus. In the midst of it, online gaming has seen a surge in the growth of new users, engagement rates, as more and more consumers are playing games to survive boredom in self-isolation. Recently gaming startup EWAR Games has seen a surge of 3x growth in their userbase, according to BWDisrupt .
EWar Games founder and CEO Parth Chadha, said, “Ever since the countrywide lockdown was announced by the Hon’ble Prime Minister, internet and smartphone usage and screen times have gone up massively in our country. Therefore, it is not much surprising that companies in the gaming and e-sports domain has been benefitted during this period. We are happy to note that out of the 3x post-lockdown growth in terms of users on EWar app, a majority of our new users are coming from tier 1 cities, and the organic traffic volume and engagements are increasing day-by-day. Besides, we have also noticed unusual user session patterns off late. While before the lockdown, peak hours of engagement on our platform were post-evening and in the night, in the current situation, games are being played by users through the entire day, whereas number of app revisits has increased during daytime.”
In the last two weeks, EWar has taken its total user count to over 500k and during this lockdown period, EWar’s mobile app has also noted a 40 per cent increase with respect to the average time spent per day by users on the app, and 4x growth in the average number of games being played daily.
Earlier in April EWAR Games raised $200,000 in equity funding from Jindal Steels and Gameplan (a sports management firm based out of Kolkata) founded by Jeet Banerjee.EWar was officially launched in January 2020 and it is their first time to secure funding since then and the company is optimistic to raise its next round of funding in the upcoming few months. During that time the company committed they will use the amount raised amount to optimise the quality and user experience of its product (mobile app), and strengthen its marketing and brand promotion efforts across various mediums.