Do you recollect the days when Internet was limited to the rich and s used to charge anyplace between INR 15 – 20/hour? Most digital bistro administrators profited riding on the teen fixation on recreations. Players like Sify had internet management solutions which could time your use and lock the screen when the stipulated paid-for time was up..
And after that internet got to be cheap to everyone could afford the cost of it. This affected the cyber cafes. In major cities,its very hard to locate a internet cafe,but the trend still proceeds in Level 2 and Level 3 cities.Chris Lee is a Korean national who saw the chance to revive the cyber cafes and began to tap into it with his organization Funizen.
Chris began his profession in South Korea where he was a Project Manager for a US-based organization. However, he soon moved to the gaming business as that was where his heart lay and joined Nako Interactive as Marketing Director. He was in charge of game localization in various countries like,China,Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan among others. Given its vast youth population,Chris realized India, as well,had an untapped market potential in gaming.
Chris says, “India’s population is very nearly the same as China’s (In May 2012, the Indian Government said the populace was 1.25 billion and in 2020, it will be 1.4 billion while China will have 1.3 billion). We simply need to see the popularity of gaming in China to appreciate what can perhaps be done in India. Coupled with the fact that graduates are smart and very sensitive to trends universally; the work environment is equipped to success.Of course, an IT-driven industry means simple access to web too!”
However,gaming has not yet picked up in India. Funizen works on two different models – one is cyber cafe management software which helps cafe admins secure their machines, by forestalling unauthorized software downloads and other, helps them deal the way online games are played from their PCs.The organization install the cyber cafe software free in Level 2 cities and then train the cyber cafe admins on better management of the cafes.They then cafe admins about e-pins a kind of online money for playing particular multiplayer games, which are utilized to purchase playing time in these MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing games)and for in-game items.
To promote gaming,the organization has launched a game called Elsword-free game download and conduct gaming tournament across the nation.This is also expected to bring in better incomes for the organization.At present they claim to have around 100,000 users on the platform and have raised up $2 Million in a series,round from US based VCs (couldn’t be confirmed as names of VC’s are not revealed because of confidentiality clauses as claimed by Chris).
vickyjohn 