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Crustplay.com a unique and India’s only Fantasy eSports was recently acquired by GTSwap, an eSports Tech Platform, for an undisclosed amount.
Crustplay.com is the brainchild of two very young entrepreneurs, Dinesh Kruplani and Yuvaraja Poojary, who are eSports enthusiasts and thought of developing this very unique platform which integrates eSports Tournaments, Leagues & Championships with Fantasy eSports for attracting a wide spectrum of esports enthusiasts globally
Vijay Dalwani, a serial entrepreneur, startup mentor and angel investor, who is also the founder of GTSwap eSports emphasized on the need of such a platform which not only attracts the athletes to participate in leagues but also a large segment of followers who don’t play the game but like to watch their favorite athletes contest online. This segment would be interested in engaging with Fantasy eSports of their favorite leagues.
A few questions posed to the creators of Crustplay.com
1. Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making?
We grew up playing video games and also working in the same industry for 3+ years. While working on our previous startup, we understood our users before working with any client, that’s when we came across a huge gap between fantasy gaming and esports, well that’s where we started looking at the huge market potential.
2. What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn't exist yet (or they don't know about it)?
The majority of gamers spend hours watching their favorite set of esports players and always come up with their own dream esports team with their favorite players in it, whereas in reality, it’s not possible.
They could discuss their dream esports team with their friends, have arguments, fights and end up being friends again and gain nothing out of it because there is no fantasy esports platform.
CrustPlay solves this problem and allows gamers to make their own dream esports teams by using their skills, experience and win money (argument with friends too) by participating in contests. Well, not just this, gamers can also participate in leagues along with their friends and make money by playing.
3. Provide a brief overview of your industry and any current trends.
Indian Gaming Market is growing rapidly, it went from $431m in 2017 to $2b in 2021 and is projected to reach $4 by 2025. The esports audience in India has grown from 6m in 2017 to 17m+ in 2020 and is projected to be 85m+ by 2025.
4. Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?
FanClash- Esports Fantasy Platform (direct competitor) raised 500K USD, with around 50,000 monthly active users yet unknown to users.
Dream11 (potential competitor) India’s biggest Sports Fantasy Platform. It’s easy for them to enter the eSports market with the availability of capital and resources.
5. What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?
We understand users, and that is the most important thing which has got us here and helped us grow organically. We clearly understand their need and their psychology. We have managed to build a platform from scratch with unique features and the functioning of the platform. Other startups may put in capital and resource but fail to recognize and understand their users.
6. How do or will you make money? How much could you make?
As of now our focus is on user acquisition by offering them access to global leagues/championships of leading eSports tournaments. We are reaching out to these tournaments to partner with them, associating as their official Fantasy eSports partner. This will bring in lot of credibility and grow our user base.
Our primary revenue source is our AdNetwork, where we enable brands to advertise and target their product to gamers directly. Our Ad Network is designed as a hybrid model where brands can opt for monthly subscriptions or on CPI/CPC basis depending on their marketing strategy.
7. How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense that it won't be attractive to users till it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network), how will you overcome that?
Our main market plan to get users would be referral programs, self-operated leagues, and partnership/collaboration with esports organizations to run fantasy leagues on daily basis. Referral and Invite would be a great source for our rapid growth. Apart from these, we would be focusing on growing users organically through social media.