zapak.com arrives on the Indian gaming scene

Excerpts from Power Breakfast on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show »

The Anil Dhirubhani Ambani Group or ADAG is ready to play! The company has launched its online gaming venture - zapak.com and hopes to make it a billion dollar venture in three years.

When Rajesh Sahaweny pitched an online gaming business plan to Anil Ambani, he was told to get on with his gaming - and that's the punchline for zapak.com. The company currently offers 150 games and will double its gaming bouquet in a month's time. Zapak will see a three-phase rollout, gaming cafes and even a centre to develop gaming content.

President, Reliance Entertainment, Rajesh Sawhney told CNBC-TV18, "We are going to have a team of 200, who will be developing massively multiplayer online games, MMOG, localizing it and releasing it in 2008. There have been requests for joint ventures and it makes sense to collaborate, so we are looking at all options."

ADAG will invest over $100 million in zapak over the next three years and hopes to touch the billion dollar mark in value terms over the same period. Revenues will be a mix of advertising, subscription and transaction or e-commerce.

Zapak is also in talks with various youth oriented brands to develop adver-gaming, thats advertising bundled in gaming content. The company is targeting a community of atleast 10 million users by the end of next year.

Though right now its games are designed around sports and bollywood, zapak will soon focus on mythology and action. It will also offer an option of downloading international games at attractive Indian prices. This is clearly the sunrise for the online gaming industry in India. You can start playing immediately by visiting zapak.com, as these games do not require any installation of programmes, so no CDs, no requirements for memory space on the computer. Just log in to Zapak.com and play this game for free against anyone in the world immediately.

"Today we have launched the world's first full-feature online multiplayer cricket game. Cricket is our big ticket offering to the online fraternity with which we intend to make a mark for Indian games even in the International fraternity," said Rajesh.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE CRICKET GAME
· Play against Human opponents
· Toss Feature
· Set your own field
· Play in different Weather conditions
· Variety of bowling techniques
· Normal book strokes and innovative strokes
· Strokes mapped from real cricketers
· 5/10/15 over matches playable
· Team selection - All cricketing test playing nations with AI based on their actual standing
· Record of Wins
· In-game bowling/batting Statistics Display
 

Check the gaming site at http://zapak.com/

Bushra Bhushan