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There was a time when OTT was growing, but now it’s a bit saturated. Casual games are becoming more and more popular. India has about 400 million users, from 350 million to 400 million, all of whom play casual games. In an exclusive chat with Storyboard18’s Otohiko Kozutsumi (Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer, AnyMind Group), we delve deeper into his gaming scenario in India. Rubena Singh, country manager for India and MENA, will also talk about Anymind’s business strategy, gaming, acquisitions, expansion, influencer marketing, AI, and more.
What has AnyMind been up to?
Oto: We operate two types of business. The first is brand growth and commerce, and the second is partnership expansion. In the first, we work with brands to provide end-to-end solutions from marketing to e-commerce business. We started in the advertising and marketing business. We also provide e-commerce services to these brands. So they aim to drive conversions online. We offer everything from brand awareness to conversion and online business sales. That’s why we are doing this kind of business.
Another element is partner development. Here, we collaborate not only with creators, but also with online publishers and media outlets. Then there are app developers like we do with his POKKT mobile business. We support mobile game brand business expansion. It is not intended for branding purposes. They are trying to increase the user base of their app. The company is also aiming for advertising revenue from brands. The brand side comes first, followed by the application side.
What are India’s expansion plans?
Oto: In March 2020, we acquired India’s POKKT. This was about 4 years ago. So this March marks his 4th anniversary since his acquisition of POKKT.
Before acquiring POKKT, we were planning to enter the Indian market as it is huge and growing rapidly. In the digital economy or industry, this industry segment is rapidly expanding. We wanted to expand into the Indian market and we met Rohit, the founder of POKKT. We acquired POKKT because we believed in his leadership and his incredible insight into the mobile gaming and advertising industries. They already have a very strong business base in India, which allowed us to introduce our influencer marketing platform.
Next comes the e-commerce management platform. Additionally, we will introduce the publisher’s growing business to India. Furthermore, we plan to grow our influencer business and EC business. Next, we will launch a partner growth business. Therefore, we hired Ms. Rubina as our country manager for India. Currently, we are promoting influencer marketing and e-commerce business under excellent leadership.
Rubina: As Mr. Ofuji said, there are two aspects to our business: brand growth and partner growth. So, to grow the brand, we started with mobile marketing. However, Anymind’s skills have enabled the incorporation of influencer marketing and direct-to-consumer (D2C) strategies. D2C solutions are also available in that regard and are something we are currently growing. You know, cross-selling, up-selling, and expanding that.
Additionally, the company is designed around partner growth. I think we have a very large scale in terms of partner growth. Mobile He believes that marketing is always important to us. D2C marketing through tags and influencers is gaining traction. But I think we’re now looking at how to serve mid-market, mid-segment customers beyond the top cities and how to penetrate deeper. Our technology makes it easy to scale with that. This is because, although the number and volume of customers is huge, they are not necessarily customers of major companies. We currently serve very large enterprise customers. However, the current idea is to start considering the top cities.
How are you using AI?
Oto: Before generative AI was proven and booming, we were already incorporating AI capabilities like machine learning and computer vision into our influencer marketing platform AnyTag and as a partner growth business. In other words, AI is already widely used in the automotive business. And now, generative AI is thriving.
Recently, we introduced AI influencer capabilities to businesses. AI influencers are divided into two parts. One is a typical AI influencer who can publish something appealing on social media networks such as Instagram, and the other is a very interesting AI influencer live commerce feature.
Live streaming and live commerce can be done 24/7 by working with AI influencers. So if humans need to do it, we can do it, right? So these are very interesting features for AnyMind. We would like to inform you that we recently started a new project of this kind.
Can you tell us more about the areas that Anymind is famous for?
Rubina: The gaming field is the technology stack we designed for collecting games. We have an aggregator for all the casual games found on these 3 billion tablets. The value is in the technology stack that we built about 10 years ago and understand the consumers who use those games. Marketers can leverage the stack to target specific clients. There was a time when OTT was growing, but now it has reached some level of saturation. Casual games are becoming more and more popular. India has around 400 million users, from 350 million to 400 million, and they all play casual games. Mobile phones have mobile games. Play to relax, unwind, or simply entertain yourself. So we’re doing things to help us understand user behavior and provide brands with opportunities to target them.
When it comes to influencer marketing, are there any consumer trends that Anymind is capitalizing on in India and globally?
Oto: First, consumers move very quickly. Instagram used to be very active in Southeast Asia, but then TikTok entered the Southeast Asian market. And it is currently one of the fastest growing social media platforms in India. Oh, yes. It’s dominant. Not TikTok, but Instagram, Josh, and Moj.
There are several platforms, right? Therefore, consumers are adapting to technology. They are moving very fast and I believe they are exceeding the expectations of businesses and companies. This means you will also need to adapt to a more localized approach. So this only supports Instagram and Facebook. Yeah. what else? Yeah. Tick-tock. There’s also YouTube.
However, we also started adapting and supporting X (ex Twitter). i.e. X x Twitter) remains popular in Japan, the United States, and Saudi Arabia. Interesting. And there are many other platforms in India. Therefore, in the future, the platform will need to be adapted or localized to serve such platforms.
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