Moonshine Technology Pvt. Ltd., which runs the online platform PokerBaazi, said it intends to spend $12 million to $15 million this financial year on advertising and marketing activity, a triple increase from the year before.

Moonshine, which additionally runs applications like CardBaazi and the fantasy cricket game BalleBaazi, is also hoping to offer new games, such as Solitaire. “Now we think it’s an apt time to take poker to the masses, and so, we are tripling our marketing and advertising budgets,” said Moonshine co-founder and chief marketing officer Varun Ganjoo. “In gaming, the topmost source of discovery is through peer recommendations. “And so, the experience of a user becomes important,” he said.

The organization’s games fall under the “pay-to-play” classification. Moonshine had begun its business with PokerBaazi, later expanding into fantasy sports and card games like rummy and so forth.

“Poker is a skill game that is played for real money.”But we are marketing it more like a sport and not a game, and we are also looking at tying up with management institutes and corporations,” he said. Ganjoo claimed that PokerBaazi has over 150,000 monthly active users and 20,000 daily active users. Other apps like fantasy cricket have a more fluctuating user base. Overall, its user base is 12 million, with 3 million exclusively playing poker and the majority playing fantasy cricket, he added.

Moonshine’s subsidiaries are BalleBaazi, run by SBN Gaming Pvt. Ltd., and PokerBaazi, run by Baazi Network Pvt. Ltd. CardBaazi enrolled as Baazi Games Pvt. Ltd.

As per data accessed by business intelligence platform Tofler, Baazi Networks detailed an 82% leap in consolidated revenue in FY22 at 84.3 crores. It revealed a profit after tax of 4.52 crore in FY22, almost tripling from 2.49 crore in FY21, as per filings with the Registrar of Companies.

Moonshine’s revenue was 21.4 crores in FY22, nearly doubling from 11.22 crores in FY21. It earned a profit of 1.73 crores in FY22, up from 84.5 lakh in the previous year. Baazi Games posted an 80% drop in revenue to 1.55 crore from 7.49 crore.

Ganjoo said Moonshine expects to achieve revenues of 180 crores in FY23, which will primarily be led by a product-led strategy where PokerBaazi will continue to remain the focus.

Moonshine has raised $20 million since its origin in 2014 across different rounds during 2017–2021.

This June, Moonshine signed entertainer Shahid Kapoor, with whom it did a TV commercial and a 360-degree campaign that was broadcasted during four recent cricket team tournaments played by the Indian team, excluding the World Cup. “Offline cricket is a go-to game for any advertiser.” This is where the audience lies. “Our next big partnership is going to be with the television show Shark Tank India, where we will be the co-presenters,” said Ganjoo.

Ganjoo added that in poker, its slant is to a great extent shifted towards men, with around 90% male players. However, more women are now entering the labor force. Generally, users spend around 120 minutes on average when they are playing a poker tournament.

According to him, the game gets the most traffic from Maharashtra and the Delhi-NCR region. But it is also now seeing traction in cities in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, etc. With locations like Lucknow and Nagpur picking up, the company expects an increasing number of businesses coming from Tier 2 cities.

Credit: The Times Of India