Vodafone India, one of the country’s known telecommunication service providers, is offering gaming enthusiasts a new destination with Vodafone U Game-a-Thon, as part of the 15-day online gaming fest in the country. Available on Google Play Store, the gaming event kicked off on 1 December and includes several gaming categories including sports, simulation, puzzles, among others.
Gaming has a huge Indian following. 71 per cent smartphone users play mobile games on a regular basis and it is the second highest engaging category after chat apps. It is a growing trend amongst youth in India.
As a special initiative targeting this group, Vodafone U and Google have come together to offer gamers an online platform, where they can ‘participate, play and showcase their gaming talents’.
Inviting all Vodafone U customers to join Game-A-Thon, Vodafone India, national brand head, Siddharth Banerjee said, “Gaming is an identified passion point amongst today’s youth. Recent reports indicate that in the digital world, games are the second highest engaging category in India after chat apps. Resonating with Vodafone U’s brand proposition of #FunAlwaysOn, we present ‘Vodafone U Game-A-Thon’ a unique platform where our customers will get a choice of 18 indie games to indulge and enjoy.”
Vodafone U customers can participate in the Vodafone U Game-A-Thon from 1 December, 2016 to 15 December, 2016. Over 18 games are available to play in U mode, in order to avail the prizes on all the 15 days across 6 categories – Action, Cricket, Adventure, Racing, Puzzle, and Strategy.
India has the second largest developer community in the world, yet Indian developers haven’t reached the same scale as their global counterparts. Globally, gaming contributes to over 50 per cent of app revenues and is the largest and most profitable segment of app business.
Vodafone U Game-a-Thon is currently live and has already driven more than 1 million downloads. With a huge youth market, the potential for gaming to grow even further is huge and Vodafone might be entering into the space to tap into the evolving gaming ecosystem in India.
Speaking to AnimationXpress, Vodafone India, national brand head, Siddharth Banerjee said, “the youth has three passion points, one is music, the other is movies and the third is gaming…..and if you see gaming, it’s an identified passion point for Indian youth where we hope to engage with the youth so as to build both awareness as well as affinity for our youth sub-brand called Vodafone U”.
As almost all the titles in the list are indie games, it can be a good sign for indie developers, given known brands like Vodafone are trying to tap into the gaming ecosystem. If more brands follow suit, it might provide a good thrust to developers.
Does this mean, the company has future plans to venture into the gaming/eSports?
“That’s a kind of a futuristic statement, but if you were to take a leaf out of what we are doing, we have associated with India’s first online gaming festival. As we get into the space and understand the space better, as we understand consumer response better, as we understand the app developer ecosystem better, it will place us as one of the first movers in the space, it’ll place us in a good position to be able to take a call into how much we really want to get into that space, but as our first indication of interest, we have already made by coming together with Google for the Game-a-Thon,” said Banerjee.
It is interesting to note that Vodafone does not choose the game but they provide the platform only, it is Google who curates the entire thing.
Banerjee concluded with a statement which can be a hint about their future interests in the sector, “India is a leapfrog economy and technology moves really fast and it may move even faster as we go along. We would be looking into virtual reality and immersive experiences”.
The winners of the Game-a-Thon will be rewarded in two ways,
Daily Prizes – There will be one winner per game, per day. Every winner will receive a Vodafone U hamper with a pair of Sony U Branded headphones.
End Prizes – There will be one winner per game at the end of the offer period. Every winner will receive a Vodafone U hamper with a Google Pixel smartphone.
Here’s the list of games from the event:
