Rooter, the uninitiated, is an Indian game streaming app. It currently holds the highest spot within the ‘Sports’ section of the Google Play Store. As per the mobile intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Rooter registered 2 million downloads in May 2021 alone, growing at 5 times the pace of its rivals.
Now, a gaming app occupying the highest spot in a cricket-crazy country like India is pretty significant.
In principle, Rooter works like the American live streaming platform Twitch or the sports streaming section of YouTube. within the Indian app space, it competes with Loco and Turnip.
But Rooter wasn’t always like that. Its success is merely recent. It was started in 2016 as a hotspot for sports fans. It wont to provide personalized content for sports like football and cricket, encouraging fans with live commentary, videos, and social listening.
In conversation with afaqs!, Piyush Kumar, founder, and CEO, Rooter, says that sports content is promising, but there’s a significant issue with the world that hindered his platform’s growth.
Sports in India are irregular, i.e., the sporting events aren’t consecutive, and believe external factors for continuity. Things came to a stop when the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020.
Over that, Indian fans have precise preferences. The engagement on the platform would dip if the Indian team wasn’t playing. The pandemic-era boom in gaming emerged because of the perfect opportunity. After a couple of months of passive observation, the Rooter team built technology and decided to undertake our game streaming.
“The ecosystem was growing fast around games like PUBG. We understand that gaming could solve all our issues with sports, particularly the retention and user acquisition part. It worked rather well for us,” mentions Kumar.
Now, he wasn’t always an entrepreneur. He began as an advertising executive with FCB Ulka in 2004, performing on brands like Micromax, HCL, and Zee Sports.
“I didn’t take a suggestion from BMW because I wanted to start Rooter (in 2016).” To speak on the shift from an employee to a tech founder, Kumar points out three “very important” aspects of his role.
– Evolve the thought for a product-market fit. “That’s a very tough part and where tons of start-ups die.”
– Build the proper team. “They are the people who’ll assist you realize your dream.”
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