MOGO Recruiting Brands with Physical Sites in India for AI-Driven Collaborative Research into Gaming, Youth and University Student Markets

Mobile Global Esports (MOGO) announced that the company is actively recruiting brand partners to engage in collaborative alpha market research programmes based upon MOGO’s unique user data-driven insights into the Indian collegiate esports and youth mobile gaming market. Mobile gaming is no longer just an expensive hobby for urban youth who can afford it – participation in esports has expanded beyond initial metropolitan areas into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities in India, and new research shows that the Indian mobile gaming market is expected to exhibit a compound annual growth rate of 19.75% through 2027.

“We already know what these gamers are playing, and are building anonymized yet addressable user profiles. Now we are enhancing those profiles with the top twenty physical locations they spend time at, be it at their or a friends home, a university cafeteria, internet cafe, movie theater, fast food restaurant, retail establishment, gym, and such. We execute our aggregation of data on a 100 percent precision basis, and we are using AI to guide this precision. No misfires or misplaced clusters, we hit the same target every time, allowing partners to craft singularly appealing offerings that speak to the unique needs of the individual,” said MOGO CDO Nick Venezia.

MOGO’s modelling analyses geo-verified location data to assign interest to that user identity, allowing us to create clusters with similar preferences and buying behaviours in different regions of the country. The Company’s Point of Interest (POI) geodata ties into actual physical visits to locations, such as restaurants, retailers and entertainment venues with high levels of consumer activity.

Application of this intelligence allows MOGO to also look historically into the past to see what games users were playing and then tying that to a current job title and industry they’ve gone into post-graduation. One preliminary hypothesis is that first-person shooter fans have a proclivity to become sales professionals. MOGO’s precision data and technologies have the ability to help foster the knowledge, innovation and thought leadership that will help power India’s ascent as a market leader now and for the next 100 years.

“We’re at a very exciting inflection point in the build-out of our signal-aggregate data platform. India is an evolving consumer market, well-educated and socially connected with a growing middle class, 37+ million college students with 8+ million coming up every year and 18-24 year olds affluent enough to afford smartphones and data plans. Most companies have little visibility into their true market dynamics in India, and those that do hold it very close to the vest. We’re recruiting partners with which to provide actionable insights and paths to engagement and customized user experiences in India that benefit both our target demographic and the organizations and brands engaged – from game publishers to retailers to cell phone and consumer services providers,” said MOGO CEO Dave Pross.

“For example, when you compare India cell phone penetration at 46.5% of the country’s total 1.42 billion population, with US cell phone penetration at 81.6% of US total 338 million population, there is room for significant provisioner growth in India, especially into the expanding youth and student demographic as better phones and faster data plans become more affordable. Given our visibility into the mobile gaming market in universities and beyond, and that 91% of Indians participating in competitive video gaming do so on their mobile devices, we see significant opportunity for provisioners seeking actionable insights and paths to engagement in the mobile device and data market, as well as for enabling offerings such as financial and credit services,” Pross added.

“Our initial research into the dynamics of the university student, Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha provides demographics in India through deterministic modeling, POI (Point of Interest) geodata indexing and dwell time linked to site visit data is showing actionable paths to engaging this market through tailoring products and services to meet their true needs. Given the high level of mobile gaming in India, cross-correlating actual physical location data with game-play behavior is important to our partners in focusing their marketing efforts. For example, in areas where gamer groups are congregating to compete that also show that vegetarianism is prevalent, a restaurant food chain could offer a laser-targeted vegetarian loyalty program and we can measure its effectiveness in almost real-time,” said Venezia.

For a video game developer/publisher seeking entry or greater presence in the Indian market, insights into the preferences, behaviours, and demographics of their target audience will help identify which game attributes are most important to different age/gender/affluence levels and geographic regions and tailor their games accordingly, as well as allowing for personalization of game attributes for individual players based on their preferences and behavior patterns – like game and character content, rewards and challenges that are more likely to appeal to them. In addition, MOGO partners will be able to create predictive models to anticipate future trends, demands and preferences using user data from previous version and/or game launches, player reviews and social media conversations to optimise game attributes and improve overall player experience.

“We’re able to say to a brand with 100 percent accuracy, while promulgating world-class user privacy and data security standards – that this person showed up at this point at this time, spent ‘X’ minutes playing ‘X’ game, and then went to a movie theater afterwards. From the very first ‘Intergalactic Spacewar Olympics’ Space Invaders’ Championship at Stanford University in 1972, esports has held the interest and focus of the college audience. They’re competing for a lot more than a subscription to Rolling Stone magazine now, and spending a lot more time and money. For this audience, authenticity matters – from human, creator and brand standpoints – and we aim to help our partners deliver that,” Venezia concluded.