We are not trying to grab business with Internet cafes, but relying on the venues to build our own e-sports ecology.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Zhixiang.” ID:passagegroup), author Luo Ruiqi.
In early October, a store on the left side of the main road in the Indiranagar district of Bangalore sneaked into the signboard of “Rock Monkey”.
The Monkey God wears sunglasses and its mouth rises. It also has a not so good Chinese name Hanusha, the combination of the monkey god Hanuman and the god Ganesha, the embodiment of self-confidence, courage and fearlessness.
Abandoning these Indian elements, the audio equipment, keyboard, mouse, and mainframe in the store are all “MadeInChina.” Under the blessing of the monkey god and elephant god, Stiven opened Bangalore’s first decent “Internet cafe” – India’s first professional-level e-sports hall, he is one of Hanusha’s partners.
Stiven spent five years in the domestic eSports industry. At the end of last year, he and three other partners came to India for an inspection. This goal is set in the hardware industry. However, he found that the Indian e-sports industry is sprouting and the market opportunities are huge. It is decided to start from the e-sports hall and help the Indians to create an e-sports ecology.
After half a year of preparation, the first store opened in Bangalore. The location of the second home has been completed and it will be open this year.
After the opening of the first store, Stiven also rushed to Bangalore. Ten days of travel, the arrangement was full, and I visited the partner a few hours before going to the airport. They are racing against time to find the next e-sports network in India. He tried to find a gap and accepted an interview with Zhixiang. The following is from his self-report.
I wanted to export hardware, but I opened an e-sports hall in India
In early December 2018, we first visited India and went to Delhi, Bangalore and Mumbai.
There are four partners in the industry, one is a venture capitalist. He has seen the Indian market before. At that time, we were interested in the opportunity of India. It felt like the Chinese from 1995 to 2010. It was full of vigor and vitality. Of course, the culture was really out of place and varied greatly.
When we first arrived, we have not decided what to do, but the general direction of e-sports has been determined. The other three partners have extensive experience in the domestic eSports industry, mainly in hardware related. In the beginning, what we thought was that India’s manufacturing industry was not good, and the way out should be to export e-sports equipment.
On the way to Bangalore, we began to consider the soft environment of e-sports. We found that India
The initial progress is slow, mainly because the environment is not familiar. These are also we are also re-exploring, slowly exploring and experimenting. Now it is the feeling that the culture still has to adapt to the local, and the management method can learn from the domestic. What we want is to use India’s time to solve the problems in India. After all, culture is different.
Illustration: Hanusha hosts Diwali events
The venue hardware is imported from China. First, we have to build the highest-end e-sports experience, like chairs are professional-grade; second, India is costly, we buy it at home, plus 200,000 sea freight, which is more than Local products are also cheaper because of the high taxes in India.
This store is the first flagship store with an area of more than 600 square meters and 90 computers. In addition, nearly 200 square meters were vacated to make a coffee area, offering coffee and light meals, with a total investment of about 4 million yuan. Other stores, we will also set up a team section, but the area will be smaller, about 200 square meters, about forty or fifty machines.
The shop behind will be cheaper in terms of site selection. The site will be renovated and opened for two months. The first store we spent a lot of time in the early stage of exploration and measurement.
We are very confident about India and will continue to invest. Internet cafes in China have entered a supply exceeding demand, and the consumer population is rapidly declining, but the high-end venues in India are still scarce. Moreover, there are many young people in India, and they can cultivate a hobby for games with a little edification.
In addition, China’s unit price is not as high as India. In India, we can do ten blocks an hour, four in China, and one hundred to one hundred. India’s consumption structure determines that the e-sports crowd is a young man with money and leisure.
The number of young people in India has determined that the market for e-sports is very large. For example, Tencent’s mobile game PUBG is in India, and now it has nearly one hundred million users, and the e-sports audience will be hundreds of millions.
Compared with mobile games, the end tour will make people feel more exciting, the mobile game is more fragmented, but the computer screen can accommodate me in the whole, more immersive, its user level is OK And the hand game is flat.
Starting from scratch to build an e-sports ecosystem in India
We know where our customer base is. Next, to accurately reach customers, we are also in contact with some colleges and universities, and we want to do some campus activities with colleges and universities, such as college games, so that we can reach our people more accurately. In addition, we alsoPlan, each school to find one or two campus ambassadors to raise awareness.
Based on this, we can organize the game and use the popular games in India, such as the League of Legends, to find our own team members.
Marketing, we combine online and offline to find the e-sports community. Online, we have opened accounts on Facebook and Twitter, to create topics, to tell the story of e-sports, and we will also host some group constructions, events, etc. to reach our customers.
On the first weekend of the opening ceremony, we held a Dota2 competition. We started the promotion three or four days in advance, and more than 20 people participated in the competition. It can be seen from the young people in India who love the game, and the parents accompany the children. We feel that we give them more ways to entertain and they are still very interested.
Indians have a relatively simple way of entertainment. They have to queue up to go to the cinema to watch movies. He needs an environment, release and performance in a legal situation. The esports are very entertaining. We set up a 3×3 splicing screen in the venue according to the standards of international competitions, as well as the e-sports stage, which can be used for live broadcasts.
What we have to do is a professional e-sports hall that gives the player the best experience and gives him a stage for performance. We are not going to grab business with the so-called Internet cafes. We can increase the traffic of this industry, attract more people to come in, and provide these players with a career development path.
What we hope to do is to rely on the venues to make our own team through the sea elections and to create our own e-sports brand. At present, the specialization of Indian e-sports has just begun. We hope that HanushaE-sport will provide Indians with another way of entertainment. This is our ultimate goal. In the process, we will train our own teams, build nets, and sign players. Organize events every month or quarter, including leagues, seasons, colleges and more.
Illustration: Dota2 Competition by Hanusha
In addition, there were 31 colleges and universities in China that established e-sports majors last year, including the establishment of a bachelor’s degree in Communication University of China. We are docking with these schools and can do some exchange student projects to attract Indian e-sports enthusiasts to promote e-sports education.
At present, some companies in India have their own clubs, and more are spontaneously organized by players. Grassroots players are growing wildly, but there are already more than one hundred teams. We are now discussing with Tencent., build teams, and use venues for regular events. The events organized by Tencent are not of a conventional nature. There are also live broadcast platforms, etc. In India, we can also cooperate.
In addition, we will also attract some players to find players through partners, as long as they have a hobby for games, e-sports, a deeper understanding of this matter, planning and understanding of the future, we are willing to accept I will do more things together.
What we can see is a tens of billions of markets, and the potential crowd is huge. We also hope that we can work with upstream game developers, such as Blizzard, Tencent, etc., all of which require third parties to land and promote games.