Baazi Games to spend $12-15 mn on advertising, marketing in FY23

The company behind PokerBaazi is looking to deploy $12-15 million this fiscal on its advertising and marketing activity, up 3x from the year prior, the company said. The eight-year-old business owned by Moonshine Technology Private Limited, which also runs apps like CardBaazi and fantasy cricket game BalleBaazi, is also looking to expand its business to offer new card games like Solitaire and others in the coming days.

“Now that our platform has stabilized over the years, we think it’s an apt time to take poker to the masses and so we are tripling our marketing and advertising budgets. In gaming, the topmost source of discovery is through peer recommendations. And so, the experience of a user becomes important through word of mouth,” said the company’s cofounder and marketing director, Varun Ganjoo.

In June this year, Moonshine also signed actor Shahid Kapoor with whom it did a television commercial and a 360-degree campaign which it broadcasted during the four recent Indian cricket team tournaments excluding the World Cup. “Offline cricket is a go to game for any advertiser. This is where the audiences lie. Our next big partnership is going to be with the television show Shark Tank India where we will be the co-presenters,” he added. The company’s games fall in the Real Money Gaming category.

The company originally started its operations with PokerBaazi and then moved into fantasy sports and other card games like rummy etc. “Poker is a game of skill, and is in the real money gaming category. But we are marketing it more like a sport and not a game, and are also looking at tying up with management institutes and corporates to build a new user base,” said Ganjoo.

Poker, he said, has over 1.5 lakh active users monthly and 20,000 daily active users. For its other apps like fantasy cricket, it is more of a seasonal business with the usage fluctuating. But at its peak, he said it has seen 15 lakh active users per month. Overall, its user base is 12 million with 3 million exclusively playing poker and a majority playing fantasy cricket.

According to data accessed via business intelligence platform Tofler, Baazi Networks, the company that runs PokerBaazi, reported a total revenue of Rs 84.3 crore in FY22, an 82% increase over the previous year’s Rs 46.3 crore on a consolidated basis. The company reported a profit after tax of Rs 4.52 crore in FY22, nearly doubling from Rs 2.49 crore in FY21. These results were posted to the registrar of companies to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

MTPL reported a revenue of Rs 21.4 crore in FY22 up nearly 100% from FY21 from 11.22 crore in the corresponding year. Similarly, it earned a profit of Rs 1.73 crore in FY22, up from Rs 84.5 lakh in the previous year. Baazi Games, reporting a sharp decline in revenue of close to 80% from Rs 7.49 crore in FY21 to Rs 1.55 crore in FY22.

The PokerBaazi parent, he added, expects to achieve revenues of Rs 180 crore in FY23 which will primarily be led by a product-led strategy where PokerBaazi will continue to remain the focus.

The main holding company, Moonshine Technology Private Limited houses PokerBaazi, CardBaazi and BalleBaazi. Moonshine has raised funds to the tune of $20 million since its inception in 2014 across various rounds that happened during 2017-2021. Moonshine’s subsidiaries are BalleBaazi, run by SBN Gaming Private Limited while PokerBaazi is run by Baazi Networks Private Limited. CardBaazi is registered as Baazi Games Private Limited.

Ganjoo added that in poker, its skew is largely tilted towards men with about 90% male players. But now more women are now entering the fore. Typically, users spend about 120 minutes on an average when they are playing a tournament of poker.

He said the game receives maximum traffic from Maharashtra, Delhi NCR. But it is also now seeing traction from cities in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh etc. With locations like Lucknow and Nagpur picking up, the company expects an increasing number of businesses coming from tier 2 cities.