After music and movies, Bharti Airtel, on Tuesday forayed into gaming by launching Wynk Games. The company has partnered with the US-based Payphone, a Softbank-funded company, for its gaming app which comes with 2,000 global and local games including many premium and paid games, spread across cricket, sports, racing,
adventure, cards, kids, and puzzle genres. Srinivasan Gopalan, director for consumer business at Bharti Airtel told FE’s R Jai Krishna that Wynk platform would be a market place for other apps. Excerpts:

What is Bharti’s overall strategy for app-based services?

We want to look at constraints and business models. We’re in the content for building a ecosystem and driving data consumption. We want to be a catalyst for a category. As a market leader we want to invest and drive content.

There’s a long way to go on data, only 15-20% of the internet users today use game apps so there’s huge scope.

Bharti had earlier launched Wynk Music and then Wynk Movies, now what is the rationale of launching Wynk Games? What about messaging app?

Half of the data consumed in the country is through music, movies and video games. These are very heavy on data consumption, messaging apps are very light on data consumption.

Is Bharti trying to control the app market place by offering Wynk? Where does Wynk fit into overall strategy?

We believe in an open ecosystem not in a walled garden. We will partner with the best in class to offer outstanding content, where we think we’ll not be best in class.  We are in the category development. Wynk is into category development.

Can you reveal your partners for Wynk app series? How is the uptake for Wynk Music and Wynk Movies?

For Wynk Movies, we have partnered with ErosNow, Hooq, Sony Liv, Daily Motion and YouTube. For music, we have all the album rights owners. For games, we have partnered with Payphone, a Softbank funded venture.

Wynk Music currently witnesses 15 million downloads, and 8 million songs are streamed now from 1 million when it was launched in April. Wynk Movies, is still in beta stage, since launch in August, and has also seen one million downloads.

What is Bharti’s take on the recent show by Reliance Jio soft-launch and its future foray into content-based data services, as well as content providers upping their ante beyond telecom operators?

There is space for all of us. This is such a nascent market. Whoever launches apps, one-third of India will consume data on our network.