gameberry: ET Startup Awards 2023: Gameberry wins Bootstrap Champ award

In a year when frugality has been the rallying mantra for the technology world, expectedly so the ET Startup Awards jury kicked off the discussions for this year’s ‘Bootstrap Champ’ category taking note of the scale and profitability achieved by the nominees without having raised any external funds.

Three Bengaluru-based firms — Boldfit, a manufacturer of health and fitness equipment; Fyers, an online trading platform; and Gameberry Labs, an online game publisher — came through as the top contenders for the spot.

While jury members commended Boldfit for the quality of its products and user loyalty, they highlighted Fyers for its execution and perseverance to stand against competition from Zerodha and Groww in the space.

However, taking the top spot was six-year-old Gameberry Labs, which impressed the jury with its strategy of building long-term sustainable revenue by focusing completely on international markets.

Jurors also appreciated Gameberry’s execution chops to build a business in a crowded gaming space.

“It is great to receive this recognition in a world glamourised by funding … We’ve been fortunate to build a team which has embraced our vision and stood staunchly with us … This accolade is a testament to our team’s relentless effort,” said Afsar Ahmad, cofounder, Gameberry Labs.

According to Gameberry, almost 99% of its overall revenue comes from international markets such as the Middle East & North Africa (MENA), Spain, Latin America and the US.

Further, at a time when India’s online gaming industry is sinking under the pressure of a 28% goods and services tax levy, Gameberry has largely insulated itself from the impact by staying away from the real-money gaming segment.

Founded in 2017 by Ahmad and Govind Agarwal, Gameberry Labs is a local gaming outfit building casual online games for the international markets, exporting India’s popular pastime Ludo to the global stage.

With five games — Ludo Titan, Parchisi Star, Backgammon Friends, Match Star and Ludo Star — Gameberry boasts of 22 million monthly active users.

“Carving out a free-to-play game in India presents challenges due to the limited similar successes. However, adhering to foundational principles and thinking from first principles have propelled us forward. Our goal is to pen a remarkable chapter in the Indian gaming narrative,” Agarwal said.

The game publisher largely makes revenue from in-app purchases and has launched new voice-based social interactive features for existing games.

“These games (by Gameberry) like Ludo are high-engagement products … The Gameberry team had the foresight, given the recent developments around the taxation on the real-money gaming industry … They have cracked a much healthier long-term model,” said one of the jurors during the closed-door discussions.

In FY23, the company’s net revenue grew more than 20% to Rs 314 crore. It posted a net profit of roughly Rs 65 crore for the year.

Previous ETSA Bootstrap Champ winners have included smart wearables brand Noise, Wow Skincare, online stock broking major Zerodha which snagged the Startup of the Year award in 2020 while another winner BrowserStack, a web and mobile app testing firm, came close to winning the top honours last year.

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Other contenders

Boldfit

ETtech

Pallav Bihani, founder, Boldfit

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand Boldfit sells fitness accessories, nutraceuticals, core sports equipment and workout apparel. It started with the idea of bridging the large white space between premium brands such as Nike and Adidas and unbranded products.

Fyres

Fyers offers a trading platform and allows individuals to invest in stocks, direct mutual funds, futures and options (F&Os), among other instruments. Like other stock brokers, Fyers earns revenue from the active trades executed on its platform.

Boult Audio

Boult Audio is a direct-to-consumer brand that manufactures and sells audio products and smartwatches. It has sold products to 20 million customers, and scaled to 75 unique products across the audio headphone and smartwatch categories.

Klenty

Klenty helps sales teams narrow potential leads, and provides conversational intelligence tools to improve the overall efficiency of cold-call sales. It follows a pay-per-use model, with pricing based on the features used by the enterprise customer.