Dushyant Saraswat: Growing Revenue Of Businesses By Improving Customer Engagement With Gamification Solutions
Dushyant Saraswat
Founder
This is Gamification or utilization of hyper-casual games for targeted outcomes can also be used to grow revenue and enhance retention. Today, organizations implement gamification to promote business goals by developing gamified customer engagement and employing advanced dynamics to encourage desired user behaviours by cross/upselling in targeted ways. Although the use of gamificationto improve consumer engagement has grown in popularity in recent years, Dushyant Saraswat recognized this potential sector in 2019 and founded MHG Technologies(Hunter Games)as a result.
Below is an excerpt of Dushyant Saraswat’s interview with CEO Insights.
What inspired you to venture into the gaming industry?
I had led growth and revenue lines for Paytm in its early days, and afterward was also the Chief Marketing Officer for the Payments bank. Eventually, I put together a joint venture between Alibaba and Paytm, which exposed me to some incredible ways in which hyper-casual games were being used for engaging users and leveraging that attentive engaged moment to a targeted cross sell for commerce and financial products.
Growing customer bases and then retaining and leading to revenue growth is every thing and it’s been my life. So when I came across this potent play I saw in China of using a content category of games to cross sells. I was amazed.
Well, China is a highly competitive market that is probably five to seven years ahead of the Indian ecosystem, what we've been seeing over there is that the difficulty of engagement is becoming increasingly difficult as client acquisition costs are rising. One spends a lot to acquire a customer and if the customer is not engaged the chances or generating further revenue are lost.
This was an insight we gained five to seven years back by looking at Gamification in Chinese commerce and financial services apps I had never seen anything like it, and as someone who was focused on growing revenue in a country with a vast client base, this was just the thing for the most important outcome Revenue.
Having realized the potency of the play and realized there were no plug-n-play solutions that were available for enterprises, we had to build a
middleware solution for every app.
Our goal is to allow every app/website have the ability to use Gamification for engagement to retention and revenue outcomes.
Further, I realized this would be the forward looking solution to the largest problem that will arise in the future where because of privacy concerns re-engagement will be way more difficult and expensive. For example,the withdrawal of third party cookie monitoring, which is happening now is a seismic event because of privacy concerns it means that re-engagement costs with sky rocket.
The writing was on the wall: push based marketing was out and enterprises would have to build pull-based and off-topic fun reasons for consumers to draw them in and things like hyper casual games and gamification will be applied for commerce and financial services, sales will be highly crucial. This is why I quit Paytm, cashed out my stocks, and established-MHG Technologies(Hunter Games).
Could you talk about the learnings and experiences that you had acquired from Symbiosis International University and how do you apply them in your current role?
In comparison to many other universities, Symbiosis Institute of International Business has a high level of academic discipline. There was a lot of focus on academics, which I believe was beneficial, and the intensity properly established us for all the challenges ahead.
There were some wonderful professors. How ever the most valuable and endearing gift Symbiosis International bestowed upon me was the group of friends. They all have accomplished many milestones, greater and bigger than mine and I'm delighted to witness their success.
They have been the cornerstone of my social and professional life. Some are managing the world's largest hedge funds out of New York, some are at the top of IBM, others are at Tata Motors and yet others are executives for global banks. It was a spectacular batch of Symbiosis and it was my privilege to be there with them.
Define Hunter Games as an organization and where is it positioned in the industry? What are the company’s greatest strengths and unique propositions?
Everyone in the business wants to increase their revenue, and we have a very cost-effective and simple method to improve their revenue. We have a unique selling point via which we can significantly increase the engagement of our existing consumers, for whom you have already paid. We encourage them to interact with you, come to your app more frequently and participate in these moments, which draws their attention to what you want to offer and we persuade them to complete
Our goal is to allow every app/website have the ability to use Gamification for engagement to retention and revenue outcomes.
Further, I realized this would be the forward looking solution to the largest problem that will arise in the future where because of privacy concerns re-engagement will be way more difficult and expensive. For example,the withdrawal of third party cookie monitoring, which is happening now is a seismic event because of privacy concerns it means that re-engagement costs with sky rocket.
Everyone in the business wants to increase their revenue, and we have a very cost-effective and simple method to improve their revenue
The writing was on the wall: push based marketing was out and enterprises would have to build pull-based and off-topic fun reasons for consumers to draw them in and things like hyper casual games and gamification will be applied for commerce and financial services, sales will be highly crucial. This is why I quit Paytm, cashed out my stocks, and established-MHG Technologies(Hunter Games).
Could you talk about the learnings and experiences that you had acquired from Symbiosis International University and how do you apply them in your current role?
In comparison to many other universities, Symbiosis Institute of International Business has a high level of academic discipline. There was a lot of focus on academics, which I believe was beneficial, and the intensity properly established us for all the challenges ahead.
There were some wonderful professors. How ever the most valuable and endearing gift Symbiosis International bestowed upon me was the group of friends. They all have accomplished many milestones, greater and bigger than mine and I'm delighted to witness their success.
They have been the cornerstone of my social and professional life. Some are managing the world's largest hedge funds out of New York, some are at the top of IBM, others are at Tata Motors and yet others are executives for global banks. It was a spectacular batch of Symbiosis and it was my privilege to be there with them.
Define Hunter Games as an organization and where is it positioned in the industry? What are the company’s greatest strengths and unique propositions?
Everyone in the business wants to increase their revenue, and we have a very cost-effective and simple method to improve their revenue. We have a unique selling point via which we can significantly increase the engagement of our existing consumers, for whom you have already paid. We encourage them to interact with you, come to your app more frequently and participate in these moments, which draws their attention to what you want to offer and we persuade them to complete
the purchase. Hence our major differentiating factor is, everyone is seeking to increase their revenue, and we are a tool in that process.
Furthermore, unlike anybody else, we implement the bare minimum of integration necessary in only a few hours on existing apps and websites. We don't use SDKs and have a great stack of cross selling and upsell data which has been created by professionals who have done similar things on the greatest scales in the industry.
Today we have such deep insights on why features of Games used as Gamification can be potent new marketing tech and its for these reasons:
Consumers just love the option of playing Games its irresistible to play for a reward. That is the first thing about this content category of Games its fun and you want to play. This is the reason we are able to deliver 5x to 8x greater engagement for every push notification/ banner/email etc.
The second magic of Games is the way it creates an attentive forward leaning moment. This means that if we show any product information or Brand USP to the consumer blended into games the retention and recall of that message is 4x of just simply showing a banner.
Finally is the magic of Games on conversion to sales. When a user plays a game and wins some offer, they invariably value it highly. It’s something they have won and it’s a universal thing that humans value. So if we give an offer of a discount for a new service unlocked after a game we find 2X to 3X greater opt ins/ redemptions/ transactions. This is really big and it’s a Revenue outcome which is everything.
Going forward, what are the goals that you wish to invest in and how do you plan to take them further?
We have completed the first phase of our short term goal, which involved getting a lot of use cases across Industries, even while in a low yield Asian market. We constructed the full product stack including games, points, cross/upsell platform, analytics, and everything else, and we refined and burnished it by collaborating with Asian clients. This stage was what we call “Experiment in Rupees” and now armed with all the learning across Industries of Banking / Telco/Payments and Commerce we are raising of around $10 million to expand the firm into a SAAS model targeting United States and Europe where we will integrate our services into the respective markets as plug-n-play Gamification solution that any app can easily integrate and run. This will be a scaled DIY play with a subscription model.
We are very ambitious, we want every app to use Gamified engagements as the potent tool for all apps/websites for hardcore revenue and retention enhancement.
Dushyant Saraswat, Founder, MHG Technologies(Hunter Games)
Dushyant completed his MBA in International Business from Symbiosis International University. Further in his professional journey, Dushyant has been part of various prominent companies like Eveready Industries India, ICICI Bank, The Walt Disney Company and Paytm. Later, he established MHG Technologies with the brand name Hunter Games.
Location:Mumbai
Furthermore, unlike anybody else, we implement the bare minimum of integration necessary in only a few hours on existing apps and websites. We don't use SDKs and have a great stack of cross selling and upsell data which has been created by professionals who have done similar things on the greatest scales in the industry.
Today we have such deep insights on why features of Games used as Gamification can be potent new marketing tech and its for these reasons:
Consumers just love the option of playing Games its irresistible to play for a reward. That is the first thing about this content category of Games its fun and you want to play. This is the reason we are able to deliver 5x to 8x greater engagement for every push notification/ banner/email etc.
The second magic of Games is the way it creates an attentive forward leaning moment. This means that if we show any product information or Brand USP to the consumer blended into games the retention and recall of that message is 4x of just simply showing a banner.
Finally is the magic of Games on conversion to sales. When a user plays a game and wins some offer, they invariably value it highly. It’s something they have won and it’s a universal thing that humans value. So if we give an offer of a discount for a new service unlocked after a game we find 2X to 3X greater opt ins/ redemptions/ transactions. This is really big and it’s a Revenue outcome which is everything.
Going forward, what are the goals that you wish to invest in and how do you plan to take them further?
We have completed the first phase of our short term goal, which involved getting a lot of use cases across Industries, even while in a low yield Asian market. We constructed the full product stack including games, points, cross/upsell platform, analytics, and everything else, and we refined and burnished it by collaborating with Asian clients. This stage was what we call “Experiment in Rupees” and now armed with all the learning across Industries of Banking / Telco/Payments and Commerce we are raising of around $10 million to expand the firm into a SAAS model targeting United States and Europe where we will integrate our services into the respective markets as plug-n-play Gamification solution that any app can easily integrate and run. This will be a scaled DIY play with a subscription model.
We are very ambitious, we want every app to use Gamified engagements as the potent tool for all apps/websites for hardcore revenue and retention enhancement.
Dushyant Saraswat, Founder, MHG Technologies(Hunter Games)
Dushyant completed his MBA in International Business from Symbiosis International University. Further in his professional journey, Dushyant has been part of various prominent companies like Eveready Industries India, ICICI Bank, The Walt Disney Company and Paytm. Later, he established MHG Technologies with the brand name Hunter Games.
Location:Mumbai