Meet this girl from a small town... who built a business worth 2500 crores, Dhoni is the brand ambassador

WinZO Games Story: It is not easy to become a successful businessman at the beginning of your career. That too when you have limited funding. Today we are talking about Soumya Singh Rathore, co-founder of WinZO Games. 

WinZO Games is one of the largest local language social gaming platforms in the country. Soumya is one of the few people who turned a small venture into a company worth more than Rs 2500 crore in less than five years. 

Who is Soumya Singh Rathore?

Born in a small town of Uttar Pradesh in 1988, Soumya Singh Rathore did post graduation in psychology from Manchester University in UK. After this she entered the corporate sector. 

Soumya started her career with KPMG, one of the select companies in London. Later she worked for Bennett & Coleman and Times Group in India. After this she turned to entrepreneurship.

More than two crore users joined the platform

By 2018, after working in the corporate world for about ten years, Saumya Singh took a risk and started WinZO Games with Pawan Nanda. He started the backpacker travel startup Zoom Rooms with his colleague from the corporate. However, Zoom Rooms was shut down in 2016 after the Oyo-Zo controversy. 

After this, Saumya and Pawan Nanda raised a fund of 3.3 crores in 2018 and started WinZO Games. Within a year of starting, more than two crore users joined this platform. Not only this, transactions of more than Rs 200 crore started happening every month.

The platform focused on tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

Winzo partnered with indie game developers and hosted their games on its platform. The gaming platform focused on tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Their idea was quite successful. 

This led to a rapid increase in their user base. In the year 2020, Winzo made the biggest player of the Indian cricket team MS Dhoni its brand ambassador.

In the same year, he also signed a contract with Shahrukh Khan's IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Winzo also worked with famous YouTubers like CarryMinati and Bhuvan Bam, which strengthened their brand.

Available in 25 Indian languages,

WinZO mobile games generate revenue using micro-transactions, the main revenue model used. The platform allows users to play real-time multiplayer games against other players and win prizes by paying as little as Rs 2 to Rs 25. 

WinZO focuses on tier-2 and tier-3 cities, which make up the majority of its user base, and games were added to make the platform more attractive to the Indian masses. Available in 25 Indian languages.

WinZO's success can be gauged from the fact that the platform has built a base of over 50 lakh users within a year. Today, there are over 100 games
on the platform, including cricket, carrom and ludo. All of these are available in six formats and 12 languages. Apart from being extremely profitable, WinZO is a huge source of income for micro-influencers and translators. 

The company claims that around one lakh micro-influencers earn between Rs 75,000 and Rs 1 lakh. In some cases, by the year 2022, they were earning up to Rs 5-10 lakh every month.

Starting from a small venture, Winzo has today become the largest social gaming platform in the country, with a market valuation of around Rs 2540 crore. The platform has more than 175 million users and hosts more than 100 games. 

Saumya and Pawan's company has raised $100 million from investors like Kalaari Capital, Griffin Gaming Partners, Makers Fund, Courtside Ventures and Pags Group since its inception. Its revenue grew from Rs 242 crore in 2022 to Rs 687 crore in 2023.