Gaming start-up WinZo is investing $25 million as the company expands its base in the Brazilian market, as the move that will help the business diversify outside of India, said Paavan Nanda, co-founder of WinZO.
Brazil is the fourth largest gaming market in the world with a user base of 90 million users and a levy of indirect taxes such as 2-5 per cent as municipal tax. The largest economy in Latin America has witnessed a significant surge in the popularity of mobile gaming with about 4.6 billion mobile game downloads in 2022.
Fresh revenue stream
“WinZO’s expansion into Brazil will enable our 100+ partner game developers to export games while gaining free access to the Brazilian market. This expansion is particularly timely in the context of challenges faced by India’s gaming ecosystem due to a 400 per cent increase in the GST. Surely, stable revenue growth from export will help WinZO and all the partner games compensate for the impact on unit economies due to the change in GST,” said Paavan Nanda, co-founder WinZO.
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He added that the expansion into Brazilian market will open up a fresh revenue stream for the company. It will allow the gaming firm to build a unit economics positive franchise in the Brazil market and shall have a significant contribution to the business in coming years.
This comes at a time when the real-money gaming industry is reeling under stress after the government’s levy of 28 per cent GST on money invested in gaming deposits. The real money gaming companies have shut down operations and have seen mass lay offs due to this.
WinZO, which describes itself as the ‘Netflix of Gaming’ is one of the largest casual games platforms created by over 100 Indian developers. It has a 150 million active user base in India.