Dangal Games to double its marketing spends in FY22 to Rs 32 crore

Dangal Games plans to launch a campaign to create brand awareness and is currently in talks with celebrities.

They call it ‘perfect timing’ for a reason. In this case, it appears that online gaming company Dangal Games’ move to leverage its association with the on-going Indian Premier League (IPL) with the rollout of FantasyDangal, has paid off. “Fantasy as a sport in India has grown exponentially and IPL is one of the peak times for fantasy sports. Capitalising on this, we launched our FantasyDangal on April 9, the same day as IPL started, with an aim to capture as much user base as we can during the IPL while exposing our current user base to fantasy gaming,” Varun Mahna, founder and CEO, Dangal Games, told BrandWagon Online.

Dangal Games plans to double its marketing spends to Rs 32 crore in the current fiscal year to create brand awareness and is currently in talks with celebrities for brand campaigns. “Advertising is central to our strategy of entering the fantasy domain. We are planning out an extensive campaign during the IPL. In the last couple of months, one of the major spenders have been online gaming platforms and I believe that advertising plays a big role in creating brand awareness,” the company stated. In FY20, Dangal Games posted Rs 9.3 crore as marketing expense and the company claims to have increased its spends by 80% to Rs 16.2 crore in FY21. However, unlike most of the fantasy gaming companies, Dangal Games plans to spend only on digital. “Besides using social media platforms as well as programmatic advertising, we will leverage Disney+ Hotstar platform during the second half of IPL to maximise our reach and brand awareness,” Mahna elaborated.

Dangal Games entered the online gaming sector with its PokerDangal in 2017 — this was followed by the launch of rummy platform RummyDangal in September 2020. The company claims to have doubled its user base in the last year and currently has a user base of approximately 1 million with 100,000 daily active users (DAU). “With the launch of RummyDangal last year and FantasyDangal this year, we expect our user base to grow 10 times by the end of FY22,” Mahna stated.

As per the company, PokerDangal is its major source of revenue, accounting for nearly 90% of revenue with the remaining 10% coming from RummyDangal. However going forward, the company expects the revenue to be equally divided between the two platforms with FantasyDangal contributing 10% by the end of FY22. Currently, PokerDangal charges a 12% platform fee, while the recently added RummyDangal’s platform fee is just 3%. Subsequently, the average transaction price (ATP) for PokerDangal is Rs 1,500 while RummyDangal clocks Rs 1,200 as ATP.

According to the business intelligence firm, Tofler, Dangal Games’ parent company Xeta Networks Pvt Ltd clocked Rs 19.6 crore in revenue in FY20 and claims to have seen a 50-55% growth in FY21 to Rs 29-30 crore. For Mahna, while PokerDangal has been a profitable business, it will take a couple of years for RummyDangal and FantasyDangal to break-even. “We expect to break-even in the next 18-20 months,” he stated. The company posted Rs 1.3 crore as profit in FY20.

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