{eSports watch: GamerJi} Taking amateurs to professional level gamers through tournaments

This Ahmedabad based eSports startup believes in bridging the gap between amateur to professional level gamers through tournaments.

An increasing number of young video gamers view competitive gaming as a career opportunity, rather than just a recreational activity. Today, gamers need platforms that can provide them with competitive exposure to help in their eSports journey and hone their skills.

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GamerJi, an Indian eSports tournament platform, believes in bridging the gap between amateur to professional level gamers through its tournaments. The platform has been conceptualised in a way where gamers can compete, share content, and win prizes.

The Tech Panda spoke to Soham Thacker, Founder of GamerJi, a gaming expert and seasoned entrepreneur about the startup’s journey.

Being a gamer myself, I realized the need of having a platform where an average gamer stands a chance to make more from their skills and also leaving a mark in the eSports world

“Being a gamer myself, I realized the need of having a platform where an average gamer stands a chance to make more from their skills and also leaving a mark in the eSports world. With that thought, I started Gamerji as an online tournament platform in 2019,” he says.

What They Do

Gamerji is an eSports platform that hosts tournaments for popular games like BGMI, Free Fire, Call of Duty, FIFA etc., on a daily basis.

“Besides participating in these tournaments, users can share content, create clans, follow eSports news, check their stats, and also watch popular gaming videos on the platform,” says Thacker.

The company enhances the gamer experience with its unique features such as gaming profile, content sharing, group chats, communication, and cross-game leader board that help gamers maintain their gaming stats.

Besides participating in these tournaments, users can share content, create clans, follow eSports news, check their stats, and also watch popular gaming videos on the platform

Headquartered in Ahmedabad, the company has consolidated procedures such as registrations, player management and payments, making it a one-stop platform for eSports tournaments.

“Gamerji operates on a model of hosting more than 200 gaming tournaments on a daily basis, where the users are charged either subscription fees or can pay to enter into individual tournaments. The platform keeps its fees and distributes the rest amongst its winners,” he explains.

Growth Story

The GamerJi mobile app has over 1.3 million users and has conducted over 22,000 matches since its inception. The app, available on App Store and Google Play Store, hosts more than 125 tournaments daily for games such as Call of Duty and Free Fire amongst others, of the total, around 30 to 40 are hosted by influencers and organisers.

The platform has partnered with close to 200 private organisers as well as Indian gaming influencers to host customised eSports tournaments. It has also seen a 7X rise in traffic since the last year owing to the pandemic.

The first GamerJi Community Challenge GCC 1.0, which ran this year from January 23 to January 31, featured six games and a prize pool of INR 1 lakh, attracted over 21,000 players, and reached over 7.3 million influencers with a 67% engagement rate.

Gamerji is the first platform that provides an end to end automated mechanism to host, participate, and share content for eSports tournaments with its platform and tournament management software

The company recently launched its second community challenge, GCC 2.0, which witnessed one of the highest participation numbers under a single event, with over 30,000 registrations, surpassing GCC 1.0.

This year, Gamerji raised friends and family capital from La Gajjar Group, an investment group based in Ahmedabad, as well as seed investment funding of an undisclosed amount from Unicorn India Ventures, a Mumbai-based early stage VC firm, and Lead Angels Network. The company plans to raise Pre-series A capital towards this year’s end.

COVID-19 boosted the business as most millennials and GenZ’s got into gaming as a mode of entertainment and outdoor activities came to a grinding halt. Gamerji grew from 150K users to 2M+ in the past 15 months.

Future Plans

The Gamerji platform is witnessing fast growth and is aggressively elevating the inter college eSports landscape in the country with its college gaming league, CGL, which has associated with more than 100 college teams since March 2021.

CGL tournaments held in Apr 2021 saw more than 50 colleges compete, including BITS Pilani, Symbiosis Pune, Delhi University, and 19 IITs amongst others. The company plans to host three inter-college CGL tournaments and two GamerJi Community Challenge (GCC) by this year’s end.

Going ahead, Thacker reveals that going international is ‘definitely on the cards’ in the near future.

“We were exploring the potential of international foray and are hopeful to make some headway soon,” he says.

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“Gamerji is the first platform that provides an end to end automated mechanism to host, participate, and share content for eSports tournaments with its platform and tournament management software. There are few apps hosting tournaments as well as social media pages that promote offline tournaments to be considered as competitors,” he says proudly.