QLAN - The Gamer's Social Network is a mobile app and a web portal meant to serve the need for a one-stop networking platform that would be dedicated to the e-sports/gaming community. It is an exclusive platform where gamers can seamlessly connect, thus facilitating the gaming ecosystem.
In a shot in the arm for QLAN and ultimately for the gamers, the organisation recently secured the pre-seed round of funding worth $200,000.
What does the funding signify for the gaming industry? How does the company plan to use the funds? How big is the business of e-sports in India?
CNBCTV18.com caught up with Sagar Nair, CEO of QLAN, for an interview to get answers to these questions and lots more.
The excerpts of the interview are below.
How big is the business of e-sports in India?
Nair: E-sports is a multifaceted realm. There is competitive side and there is a big content creation/streamer side. In terms of size and volume, the business of e-sports has grown 5x in the last three years. Revenues in India back in FY21 were around Rs 3 billion (Rs 300 crore), and expected to grow to around Rs 11 billion (Rs 1,100 crore) by FY25. This includes the sponsorships in e-sports tournaments, the prize pools.
In terms of size, there has been a 10 percent rise in the number of teams that participate on a competitive level. That is around 110,000 teams. There are around a million gamers in India and they are expected to grow to 2.5 million by the end of this year.
The e-sports industry is poised to grow even further.
What was the motive behind setting up a platform like QLAN?
Nair: We will have to travel back a little for that. The most exciting part about QLAN coming together was the problem discovery. That was in 2018, when one of my co-founders and I worked closely with Tencent, when they were in India with PUBG. This was way before the ban.
We used to do all there consumer-led events, meets and greets and the competitive tournament setups across the colleges in India.
We saw how e-sports operated. We equipped ourselves with the knowledge that was available from the West — the markets of Europe and America. They are way more mature and evolved. We started learning from there and started applying for clients here. In that entire exchange we dealt with a lot of players and content creators based out of India. We saw the impressive growth. We are talking about a streamer who was sitting on 100,000 subscribers and two months down the line he was sitting on a million subscribers. That drew our attention.
Navin and I have been gamers since we were children. I am one of those 90s kids who paid 15 bucks to go play counter strike at a cyber cafe. I used to organise local level gaming tournaments at my cafe. Gaming was always at our core. We knew that gaming was going to grow. We knew there was an opportunity and we wanted to know how we could contribute.
We started addressing issues like how gamers are effectively connecting with each other. There has to be a data-driven process. The other issue was that the mainstream social networks are way more saturated. So we realised the need to set up a separate vertical network to be able to showcase their videos. Because the kids struggle… you need to crack the algorithm of Instagram or YouTube, find your audience. QLAN is like a Linkedin for the gamers. QLAN is a platform that is tailormade for the gamers.
What kind of demography does QLAN attract ?
Nair: Gamers as young a 13 years old are on QLAN. The age group of 13-22 years is the core gaming demography in India. We are also talking about a large footfall from the tier 2 and 3 cities of India. The growth of e-sports in these cities is way larger than in the metro cities. We are now looking at healthy percentage of girls also picking up e-sports. It is gradually on the rise.
Is e-sports becoming more acceptable now?
Nair: Valid question. There is a growing acceptance. Since I jumped full-time into the industry, in the past 2-3 years, I have seen the acceptance of e-sports only growing. E-sports even cracked a broadcast slot at prime time on a sports channel. Last year, India had the first-ever televised BGMI Master Series Tournament. It was on Star Sports 2.
There is a large degree of acceptance, be it on the content side or the professional side. But the way we need to look at e-sports is the way other sports are being promoted.
Besides cricket — and cricket is massive in India and I love the sport — the attention needs to spread out to other sports. This is gradually happening now. E-sports is walking down the same path.
Acceptance from the parents of the young gamers will come in accordance with the behaviour of the gamers. There needs to be a moderation. A parent needs to monitor the time an individual is putting into gaming. They need to support them if they are genuinely good at it. The acceptance will come gradually because every other parent always wanted their kid to either be a doctor or an engineer. It will take a lot of effort from the industry side as well as the consumer side. But I have no doubt that five years down the line, professional gaming or content creation is something that will be picked up very actively. I also do see a future where e-sports is part of the academics, where it will be played in schools like we see kids playing cricket.
QLAN received funding recently. How will the money coming in be utilised?
Nair: The investors and the brands have been backing the sector as a whole — in spite of the slow markets and the ‘funding winter’ that we are in. Two of the largest fund raised in the last month were in e-sports organisations. Nodwin Gaming raised $28 million round. After that, Rooter, which is a streaming platform for gaming and e-sports, raised money. It is still an ongoing round. Then there is us. The market is clearly saying the investors are bullish.
We know our product is right. The tech is in place. We have a very technologically advanced product. The funds that we have raised right now is to help us start scaling. QLAN has at least one user in every single continent, I am very proud to say that. We have users in both the Americas and Europe. Africa and South East Asia is a big market for us, the largest being the Indian sub-continent. We have got a validation on a global level.
Finally, what are the hurdles for the e-sports industry and how does the industry plan to tackle them? Also, any breakthrough story that QLAN is proud of?
Nair: The agenda for most businesses operating in this space in India is on-boarding non endemic brands. E-sports has reached the scale where the Coco-Colas and the McDonald's of the world should step in this realm. They should start investing because it is the future. The Gen Z and the millennials chose gaming over any other form of entertainment. Music and OTT industry put together is still smaller than the gaming industry at the global level. It is time that the brands take a notice of that.
To answer the second question, there are so many tiny breakthrough stories every day. QLAN has given the grassroots creators a platform to start making money from their content. We are empowering the gamers and the content creators.
