India is still pretty far when it comes to taking online Gaming seriously. Neither is there a strong community base (even though every other High school will have a plethora of gamers housed in there), nor is there any significance financial or talent investment from bigger internet firm within the company. All of these combined have led to that non-serious perspective towards gaming.
Despite that though, there are certain startups who have identified the potential in the segment, and are developing educational games which, even if are not comparable to what the western world has developed, are at least a notch above of what India has produced till date. One such startup, trying to make gaming more socially acceptable, is Qureka. Lets get a deep dive on what the company does and how it does it.
Founded by seasoned serial entrepreneurs Shalini and Apurva — both of whom got their earlier ventures acquired by Times Internet — Qureka was born in March 2018, out of founders’ urge to create a platform that combines the best of gaming, makes the users sharp and increases their knowledge base — all in all, a value adding game that is also socially acceptable.
Qureka started off in a simple quiz format with the aim to make quizzes relevant with changing times. Quiz format games have been around for the last 15 years, but with Qureka we integrated the best elements of winning with gamification, seamless engineering, user friendly and socially acceptable formats, diverse categories ranging from interesting past elements like Back to School years to current happenings on a particular subject. Qureka has also introduced memory enhancing and cognitive ability refining games that eliminate the literacy barrier and can be enjoyed by a wider spectrum of audience. The multilingual tool delivering game availability in 6 languages also makes it a hit amongst the non-english speaking audience. Currently we have more that 3 lac DAUs spending over 8 – 10 minutes / per user / per day. The company has raised a strategic seed round from Times Internt – the digital wing of Times of India group.
Organic Growth is the key
Speaking about how current traction and how organic growth is all that the company has achieved so far, the founders said,
Lacs of users playing at the same time made the live experience thrilling and engaging and traction was caught immediately transcending to tremendous growth despite no huge marketing budgets. Our growth till date is completely organic and is dedicated to our multifaceted format and the teams early experience of utilizing the growth of a booming industry without marketing spends and their expertise in the android ecosystem.
The team was clear that they had to focus on engagement and user retention and not on other novelty metrics. Hence, spends were not directed towards user acquisition. The result ? The app reached 3 million installs only through organic and referral installs. Qureka currently has 300K Daily active users and 1.6 million Monthly active users. The time spent on the app is over 8 minutes / day per user. An average user visits Qureka 7-8 times a day.
Early on in Qureka, the team figured while the idea of making people sharper and the fact that it is widely acceptable is giving them the initial traction, there was an early realisation on the things that impact Qureka. Both the founders knew, that if vernacular adoption of Qureka does not happen, the idea can’t be successful. The team hence evolved the app with a choice of 6 languages and the move drove exponential growth. Non-english usage of the app currently stands at 50%.
Identifying user perspective through linear regression
Qureka isn’t just a pure-play gaming app. The app uses linear regression to estimate perspective user base, their behaviour & engagement patterns. Qureka capture users’ activates, life cycle and action points and use them to reach out to the most relevant user base.
For example a person who has won any quiz in a month is the most relevant audience for our monthly Mega Quiz. We create such data sets and send mailers, SMS, notifications to such users separately and also promote the referral program where if his referral wins he / she get 50% of their winning amount.
said the founders, while talking about the tech powering Qureka
Scaling up and reaching the next 500 Million in India
The team is committed to scale upto 500 Million users within India. The target is ambitious, but the team has plans in place to achieve the same.
India is a large android market, where millions of users are coming in. We for now intent to focus in India for the next 1.5 to 2 years and reach out to the next 500 million new age Indians in multiple vernacular languages. Our format and technology both are scalable and equipped for global outreach however for the next couple of years we shall focus on Qureka and Qureka Pro to take them to Indian markets and audiences.
The next international target markets suiting Qureka sensibilities are Indonesia and Brazil. These are large android focussed markets and their ecosystem and socio economic graphs mirrors India’s.
