One of the things that people don’t realize is that we have to thank Gaming & Pornography for a lot of technological advancements. I could talk at length on both subjects but for the purpose of this newsletter, I’ll focus on gaming and its effect on payments in India.
This is the reach of various Apps and even app manufacturers (across gaming, dating and singing(!)) for the month of May 2017.
All of these apps & app developers have one thing in common, beyond a point you have to pay to play. And people are paying.
This is a monetization strategy few firms have relied on thus far. Most developers are content to stick to the payouts they could get from Google’s ad sense that they rarely even believe that customers may be willing to pay to access their products.
Investors too are quite bearish in this regard. Most will tell you that ‘in app purchases don’t work’. Who can blame them? We are yet to see any company in the gaming space (or otherwise) survive on the strength of customer revenues alone.
In spaces like betting and even gaming, there is an element of addiction. You could put this down as a cause for in app purchases working. But it would be short sighted to believe that it ends there. I would pay to access better news content and music. Others may pay to access god (darshan) or get an ad less movie experience.
The number of people willing to pay vs. those who want the free version will always be skewed to the free loaders. But who cares? If you have a large and sticky user base, then to a certain extent you already have product market fit — the question then is what will they pay you for? Can you charge them an amount that is individually insignificant but collectively considerable? Or considerably across even a small percentage of the collective?
Thanks for your time,
Ashish
- Team KG
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You can reach me on ashish@kalagato.com
