Airtel expands content portfolio and launches ‘Wynk Games’

Bharti Airtel Limited has announced the beta launch of ‘Wynk Games’ - the latest OTT addition to its content portfolio.

‘Wynk Games’ is India’s first mobile app based gaming destination to host over 2,000 games (including several premium and paid titles at no additional cost) and offer an exhaustive catalog of local and global games across genres such as cricket, sports, racing, adventure, cards, kids and puzzles.

Now available for download at www.wynk.in, ‘Wynk Games’ subscription is free for Airtel users and at Rs. 29 for other customers in the app’s current beta phase.

Announcing the launch, Kartik Sheth, CEO – Wynk, Bharti Airtel said, “By subscribing to ‘Wynk Games’, customers can enjoy a host of games at no additional cost – this includes many games that are typically found as ‘paid’ elsewhere. Also, though customers download various games for free, they often can only play a few levels of the game before hitting locked levels and getting prompted to make coin purchases to continue. ‘Wynk Games’ does away with all these challenges and allows customers to enjoy complete games”.

“From music, to movies and now gaming - Wynk is now a full entertainment OTT brand. The market has shown tremendous response to Wynk services so far, thus building a compelling case for us to venture into the ever popular gaming category. We are excited to launch ‘Wynk Games’ and invite gaming lovers across India to download the app now and get started”, added Sheth.

Launched in September 2014, Airtel’s ‘Wynk Music’ has seen tremendous market success with over 15 million downloads of which only one third are from Airtel users – thus making it truly operator agnostic. The app has proven to be exceptionally sticky among its users and has grown exponentially from just over 1 million songs played per a day in April 2015 to 8 million songs played each day today. Most importantly, the category has grown substantially with consumption having grown 50x over the last 18 months.

Wynk Games, bundled with Airtel data packs aims to similarly stimulate consumption of this category. Aimed at providing a comprehensive range of ‘Wynk Games’, Airtel has tied up with Playphone Inc., a GungHo Subsidiaria and Softbank group company based in San Mateo, California. This alliance presents exciting opportunities for Indian developers as well.

“With our partnership, Indian developers on ‘Wynk Games’ will also automatically get published in countries where Playphone is present – thus giving them opportunities to expand their reach across other global as well as emerging markets. Developers require only about 10 lines of code to adapt their app to the subscription platform for ‘Wynk Games’ and can register online at developer.playphone.com”, said Sheth.

"This partnership is important, as it brings together our technology and the digital skills of Wynk”, says Ron Czerny, Chief Executive of California-based Playphone. Playphone is a mobile gaming technology company with advanced features and user-friendly game store. “Together with Bharti Airtel we are bundling ‘Wynk Games’ with data packs. This will create the ultimate gaming destination for all mobile users in India. New games will be added daily from global developers, keeping ‘Wynk Games’ always fresh and exciting for its users", added Czerny. The catalog currently includes games from about 150 developers including top global developers including Square Enix, Zeptolab, Thumbstar, Tresensa, Bulkypix and more.

Akin to ‘Wynk Music’ and ‘Wynk Movies’, customers using ‘Wynk Games’ can download games and play them offline. ‘Wynk Games’ is also an ad-free application, thus delivering the best experience for avid gamers.