How eSports and live streaming are driving Nostra's growth

Yashashvi Takallapalli, VP and GM, Nostra, details how the focus on eSports has driven the platform's ambition to expand globally.

The year 2023 has marked a significant journey for the majority of the Indian gaming ecosystem. In this emerging business sphere, Nostra, a platform dedicated to putting games on the lock screens of select mobile phone users via Glance, a smart lock screen platform, also witnessed a surge in its user base.

After registering a 30% growth in its user base in the first six months of the year, the company reported a monthly active user base of 82 million in August. 

In a conversation with afaqs!, Yashashvi Takallapalli, VP and GM, Nostra, shares that the company intends to reach over 200 million monthly active consumers within the next two years, primarily through their partnership with Glance and several other device partnerships. 

He shares that the Nostra experience provides personalised content recommendations and live experiences to over 230 million active consumers across India and Southeast Asia.

"Further, Glance’s AI enables experience-led discovery of games ensuring every user finds games, live tournaments etc that are most relevant and important to them, each time they glance at their lock screen."

He also highlights that the platform drives consumer awareness on Glance lock screen and through various eSports partnerships.

Leveraging the rising demand for eSports content

Takallapalli mentions that Nostra's latest Gaming Trends Report 2023 shows that gaming has penetrated deep in India, across age groups and gender.

This observation propelled the brand to invest in eSports streaming. "If consumers are not playing, they are watching or even participating in games. Hence, the playing field today is wide and deep when it comes to gaming consumers," he observes.

The platform's exclusive monthly IP, known as Nostra Gaming Week, extends an opportunity for amateur players to engage in competition with some of India's most skilled teams and players. Takallapalli believes this initiative serves as a catalyst for skill enhancement, talent discovery, and the development of a robust eSports community. 

Further, it has recently launched new formats to enable the discovery of games at scale. These include Live, which enables live streaming from inside any game, Connect which offers discussion forums to engage with players during the game, and eSports Tournaments which allows gamers to compete against each other. 

In the period from January to June 2023, Nostra experienced significant growth due to the popularity of live-streaming gaming tournaments, specifically eSports and game streaming.

"Nostra demonstrated a 3x increase in the time consumers spend on game streaming and a 3x growth in the daily active user base for live streaming. With more than 25 million monthly active consumers, eSports and live streaming have become Nostra’s fastest-growing vertical," he explains.

On the back of this, Nostra aims to expand its presence to other global markets including the USA, Japan, and Latin America in the coming quarters, he shares.

"We are also actively working towards nurturing and elevating the gaming ecosystem, encompassing instant games, Android games, and eSports. To achieve this, we plan to forge partnerships with prominent game developers and studios, with the aim of introducing top-tier games on the lock screen. This will facilitate widespread discovery and engagement opportunities for our consumers."