Why Gameblaze pivoted from games e-tailing to aggregation

Gameblaze.in, an e-commerce site owned and operated by TridentShoxx Labs Pvt Ltd and offering digital games, has changed its business model. Earlier, it was a pure e-commerce site (we have written about Gameblaze before), but it has now become an aggregator for other e-com sites selling games. And that means the company was earlier competing with horizontal e-tailers like Flipkart, Indiatimes, etc., but it is now partnering with them to drive sales.

The company was founded by Chetan Kumar, an IIT-Delhi alumnus who had worked on mobile video streaming solutions for telecom providers like TIM (Italy), Vodafone (Spain) and 3 (UK). He later joined iXiGO.com (in its pre-launch stage) and also started up Metaaso Solutions with a colleague.

"We had planned to follow a two-part model, according to which we would be an e-commerce player in India while internationally, we would partner with a vendor and sell its games. But we were approached by a number of vendors like Amazon, Gamespot, etc., and it was hard to choose between those. So we decided on the aggregation model for outside India," said Kumar.

"Back home, managing the offline aspects of our e-commerce business (like logistics and deliveries) proved to be a hassle. So we decided to shift our business completely – from an e-com player to aggregator – both in India and abroad," he added.

The site, which claims to offer 3,000-plus game titles, has four Indian e-com vendors including Flipkart, Indiatimes, Infibeam.com and BuyThePrice (internationally, the company offers games from five vendors). The company also plans to increase the number of games to 8,000 by early next year.

According to Kumar, he could only get a margin of 1-2 per cent as an e-commerce player. But the company has now margins ranging from 4 to 10 per cent. Currently, the site is getting around 10,000 visitors on a monthly basis and as far as conversion is concerned, it depends on the type of the visitor.

"We get two types of visitors. Some are serious buyers while others are just information seekers. For the serious buyers, the conversion rates go up to 50 per cent, but for people only looking for information, it's in the 1-2 per cent range," said Kumar.

Going forward, the site will also offer product aggregation in other verticals like gaming hardware, accessories, monitors, audio systems, etc., all related to games.

(Edited by Sanghamitra Mandal)