NEW DELHI: Backed by recent investments and surge in traffic, first due to pandemic-led shift to online gaming and more recently due to the IPL season, Bengaluru-based Mobile Premier League (MPL) has earmarked a ₹37 crore fund for Indian game developers and studios to develop games for their Indian and global audience. MPL has over 3.5 million users in Indonesia.
Many gaming platforms are looking to expand into global markets such as US and east Asia as they have more paid customers and the revenue from ads in free-to-play games is also higher than India.
To open a direct channel with new developers, MPL is going to launch a single-window online console, where Indian game developers can apply and submit their games for screening.
Along with fresh funds, MPL has announced ₹10 crore in revenue payout to 10 game developer partners for the period of November 2019 to October 2020.
Hyderabad-based Yesgnome, known for the Cricket Clash game; Qunami, which publishes the Quiz game; and BornMonkie, which publishes Auto Raja, are some of the developer partners who will receive the payout.
Game developers publish their games on MPL under a revenue-sharing agreement, which allows them to monetise their games through cash tournaments and contests.
BornMonkie, for instance, has been making around ₹5-8 Lakh every month from multiple games such as AutoRaja, Bubble Shooter and Block Puzzle.
"We are privileged to have partnered with talented game developers from all over the country and are glad that our platform helped them monetise their games. We at MPL recognise the tremendous potential that the Indian game developer ecosystem has and thus, have announced a ₹37-crore fund," Shubh Malhotra, co-founder, Mobile Premier League, said in a statement.
Founded in 2018, MPL is one of the leading mobile gaming and eSports platform with over 60 million registered users. Paytm First Games and WinZO are some of the other online gaming platforms where players can participate in live games and win cash prizes.
Early this month, online gaming startup WinZO had announced a game developer fund of $5 million (approx ₹37.3 crore) to boost game development in India.
In September, MPL raised a series C funding of $90 million from SIG, RTP Global, and MDI Ventures.
Though the company has seen a huge traction on its platform after covid-19 outbreak, the recently concluded IPL was a big landmark event for them. According to MPL, the number of fantasy players on MPL increased by more than 7x during IPL, compared to pre-IPL times, while daily installs increased by over 100%.
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