Want to earn some extra cash? Challenge yourself with a game of quiz

Sai Srinivas Kiran G and Shubham Malhotra, founders of MPL

In the early 90s, Derek O'Brien achieved cult status by hosting a quiz show for schoolchildren and thanks to the Bournvita Quiz Contest, quiz shows on television always found dedicated viewers.

Later, thanks to Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC), quizzing became inclusive of all age-groups.

While only few such shows remain, the interest amid people for quizzing has not dimmed.

To capitalise on this interest, gaming platforms are now focusing on quizzing content.

This is why Mobile Premier League (MPL) launched quizzing on its platform in September and since then, two million quiz games have been played on the platform.

Talking to Moneycontrol, MPL founder Shubham Malhotra, said: "Quizzing is one of the important categories for us and providing good value to our revenue. We are seeing good adoption and expect 1/4th of our consumer base consuming quizzing."

Currently, MPL has 30 million odd users.

This shows that people are passionate about quizzing.

And when there is cash prize attached to any game, the traction automatically goes up. Those playing quiz on MPL so far have won Rs 70 lakh.

MPL is also focusing on making quizzes available in vernacular languages.

"When we launched the Hindi version, we saw traffic going up two times or three times. This is the form of content that can be consumed in different languages," said Malhotra.

In addition, while playing on MPL, there is no compulson for the opponent to play in the same language.

But MPL's quiz addition goes beyond games and gamers. It focuses on game developers.

This is because MPL got third-party developers on board to bring quiz on their platform.

And guess who these third-party developers are? Those who created the popular short format, multiplayer quiz game in India, Qunami.

According to Malhotra, the developers are likely to generate north of Rs 1 crore in annual revenue from MPL. "This is a significant revenue generation for a game studio," he added.

Seemanth, maker of Qunami, said that for a game developer, the challenge is not creating the game but to make it reach to as many users as possible.

"MPL gives a platform to tackle that challenge effectively. For any multiplayer game the major thing is concurrency. The moment you are on a platform like MPL you are guaranteed that you will have millions of users without spending any amount of money in getting those users," said  Seemanth.

After being in business for a year, developers of Qunami have plans to attract more users with new strategies in the pipeline.

First one is collaborative gaming in the quiz category which will bring virality in the game. This will allow a player to team up with friends and compete with other teams.

Plus, a way of communication will also be added.

The next will be adding element of strategy into the quiz game. For example, the four players in one team will each have a power and using that they can knock out a player from the other team.

"Element of fantasy game play can be added in the game of quiz which will take the experience to another level and globally also this has not been done before," said Seemanth.

Reminiscing how Qunami came into existence, Seemanth said that they started as Sports Unity as a mobile app where they offered information regarding cricket.

"When we started building articles we saw that a lot of engagement of users happened around sports quizzing. So, a lot of users would ask trivia related questions to other users regarding sports. So, we felt that trivia immediately brings the sense of network," he added.

Hence, the next logical step for them was to move to quizzing and they explored topics beyond cricket.

Sports Unity's Qunami pro app has 300,000 monthly active quizzers. Players spend around 30 minutes per day on Qunami and the platform has crossed over one crore transactions with monthly transactions growing over 100 percent month-on-month.