Pratik Kumar – Co-founder, Faboom
Founded in 2019, Faboom is a leading online fantasy sports platform that offers engaging gaming experience to the users, where they can leverage their knowledge and skills of cricket, football and other sports in creating their teams, ranking their players and competing with other fans. The popularity of fantasy sports in India growing very fast and is becoming the preferred choice for skill-based games among the youth. Faboom is determined to make its mark in this industry with its product innovations, slick user experience and transparent systems. Breaking through the clutter of existing format of fantasy, Faboom has introduced two innovative formats, Boost Fantasy and Rank Fantasy. These formats are ideal for skilled users and reduce the variance of sports. The brand is committed to increasing the skill levels of the game and at the same time provides the most engaging experience to the users. Owing to the tremendous response that it has received, Faboom is also planning to expand its reach by including other sports such as Hockey, Basketball and Baseball, and creating a ‘FAB’ experience for their patrons every time they log on their app. Faboom’s mission is to continue to bring more innovations to fantasy sports and make Faboom the preferred choice of the platform amongst sports fans. To know more about their plans, Vivek Singh Chauhan spoke to Pratik Kumar, Co-founder, Faboom. Here’s the edited excerpt of the email interaction.
When did you come up with the idea of Faboom and which labels do you think could give you competition?faboom came into existence in 2019; it’s a leading online fantasy sports platform. The brand was introduced to the market by Pratik Kumar, Rishab Mathur and Sudhir Kamath. This specific trio consists of the doyens who brought a disruption in the online poker space in India three years ago with their well-established startup 9stacks. The same team is now focusing on disrupting the sector of fantasy gaming with Faboom through its creative, skill-driven format and strategic marketing growth hacks.
Dream11, undoubtedly, is the biggest
competitor of ours with a huge database. But yeah what make us stand apart from the rest of the industry is our famous Boost and Rank Fantasy features and our motto of “Captain/vice-captain ko Maaro Goli” and play fantasy with more of your skills
The market teems with a diversity of Fantasy Apps. What do you think makes Faboom stand apart in this competitive sector? What is the X-factor that makes it different from others of the same league? If one is to analyse all fantasy apps, they will notice that most of these platforms have a format where users can opt for
11 players, choose a captain and further a vice-captain. However, what our platform realised was that this format is erroneous. If the captain and the vice-captain do not perform well, gamers cannot win. In other words, the dependence on two players is high. Furthermore, the chances of your team being unique are very less. Plus, if you are not available to make the team in the last 30 minutes before the match (after toss), you miss out on participating. Considering all these factors, we decided to level up Faboom for it to stand apart and hence we created two innovative formats: rank fantasy and boost fantasy. In both the formats all 11 players in your team become important. In rank fantasy, you rank all your 11 players and in boost fantasy, you can apply different multipliers (boost) to all your 11 players. So the dependence on two players goes away and also the possible combinations of making your unique teams increase. Lastly, boost fantasy is a pre-toss format, so you can make a team whenever you want to at your own convenience and not wait for the teams to be announced. Both of these elements have further increased the skill levels of the fantasy sport and reduced variance for the players and that is what differentiates us from other apps.
What demographics do your platform cover and what is the reach of Faboom or its market size? Faboom has an overall user base of 800,000 users. Pre IPL, the average monthly active users were around 40k. With live sports coming back in action, we at Faboom have seen an overall surge of 240% in terms of monthly active users on the platform. Faboom clocked a million dollars in revenues last year and aims to grow it 4 times in this financial year. The growth in fantasy is not a linear monthly growth but is fueled by major sporting events. For example in IPL, we are seeing 4x jump in revenue from the previous months. We aim to reach 1.5 million users by the end of IPL.
How online Fantasy cricket app Faboom has changed the game for the better. What makes it unique or different from Dream 11, My 11 circle and Howzat? Faboom has endeavoured to distinguish itself from others in the race through two of its unique factors which are the ease-of-use and transparency of its product for its endusers. Simplifying things for our patrons, we have uncomplicated the game to make it convenient for both the new as well as the old users to enjoy the platform and play comfortably. We partnered with BB to take the brand to the masses with our campaign “No captain/vice-captain format, use all of your 11 players and play the real fantasy on Faboom’’. Our label is planning to notch it up in the coming years with the new innovative launches to become the fastestgrowing fantasy app. Intending to expand the horizons, Faboom is looking forward to incorporating more sports such as Hockey, Basketball and Baseball, and creating a ‘FAB’ experience for their patrons every time they log on their app. We have been the prefered choice of sports enthusiasts and we take pride in distinguishing ourselves from the other names in the industry.
This year IPL 2020 is being played behind closed doors without the physical presence of spectators. Do you think this will make
a difference in the engagement of Fantasy Apps? If yes, how? These are harsh times for everyone, the outbreak of this virus has caught everybody off-guard. It has been having its impact on our daily lives to the extent that it has disrupted our normal and steered us to redefine it. In this state of normalcy being reinstated, most of the people are staying home and some of them are turning to the gaming platforms to entertain themselves. We believe this will contribute to the growth of fantasy gaming platforms too; the sector is anticipated to witness an in-depth fan engagement, further reflecting the surge in the demand for fantasy gaming in the country.
What do you think will be the future of Fantasy Gaming after IPL 2020 concludes? Even after IPL comes to an end, there still will be a lot of cricketing action which will be taking place with India, Australia series, Bigbash LEAGUE, Pakistan Super League (PSL), so the action is bound to stay. We plan to always bring more skill to fantasy sports so that people can enjoy it more. Bhuvam Bam will be driving a lot of our campaigns as well.
DFS labels often struggle with retaining the first-time users. Is this a challenge for Faboom as well? If yes, how are you finding your way around this? We believe if a platform offers engaging formats, the users are bound to be back on it. There is no hack to retain the first-time gamers but we are confident about Faboom as we have worked hard and smart on the UI/UX of the app to give our users a great experience. Fantasy sports users are not only playing during big competitions like IPL or World Cup but now are using their skill to play many other leagues. Our platform has already included new sports categories such as Kabaddi and Football and we plan on expanding them further as we introduce hockey, basketball and volleyball to perk up the interests of our patrons. Such developments or additions now and then ensure that the fantasy gaming platforms are not solely dependent on cricket seasons for the gamers to come back.
What made Faboom associate with Bhuvam Bam, considering that he was a non-gaming celeb? Bhuvan Bam is one of the famous youth icons, known for inspiring the young ones and gaining more traction among them. Our platform also wanted to reach out to the younger generation and we thought Bhuvan would be the best to go ahead with as people of younger age groups relate with him while engaging on social media platforms. We have always adored BB for his unique factor and presence, he has disrupted the content space enormously and collaborating with him during this IPL season felt right for Faboom.
What has been the impact of COVID 19 on Faboom? These are harsh times for everyone; the outbreak of this virus has caught everybody off-guard. It has been having its impact on our daily lives to the extent that it has disrupted our normal and steered us to redefine it. In this state of normalcy being reinstated, most of the people are staying home and some of them are turning to the gaming platforms to entertain themselves. We believe this will contribute to the growth of fantasy gaming platforms too; the sector is anticipated to witness an in-depth fan engagement, further reflecting the surge in the demand for fantasy gaming in the country.
With intense competition in the fantasy gaming space, how Faboom is trying to stay ahead of other competitors? Faboom has endeavoured to distinguish itself from others in the race through two of its unique factors which are the ease-of-use and transparency of its product for its end-users. Simplifying things for our patrons, we have uncomplicated the game to make it convenient for both the new as well as the old users to enjoy the platform and play comfortably. We partnered with BB to take the brand to the masses with our campaign “No captain/vice-captain format, use all of your 11 players and play the real fantasy on Faboom’’. Our label is planning to notch it up in the coming years with the new innovative launches to become the fastest-growing fantasy app. Intending to expand the horizons, Faboom is looking forward to incorporating more sports such as Hockey, Basketball and Baseball, and creating a ‘FAB’ experience for their patrons every time they log onto their app. We have been the preferred choice of sports enthusiasts and we take pride in distinguishing ourselves from the other names in the industry. ■
vivek@mymobile.co.in