Google has invested in STAN, an Indian social gaming platform which merges social gaming with community engagement, creator interactions, and even gamified publisher activities.
This aligns with Google’s strategy of investing via their AI Futures Fund, which back in May had pledged funds to startups leveraging their AI technology. Part of an $8.5 million equity funding round that Bandai Namco Entertainment, Square Enix, Reazon Holdings, King River Capital, and General Catalyst also joined, Google made the investment through their AI Futures Fund.
While Singapore-based STAN’s ambitions put them in direct competition with Discord, their strategy to capture the gaming community market is more unique. Through STAN, users can earn “Gems” in-app currency by playing in popular games like Battlegrounds Mobile India, Garena’s Free Fire Max, Minecraft, Call of Duty and even casual games like Ludo and Snakes & Ladders.
On this platform, creators can also establish chat rooms known as Clubs, which are specialized channels for each game offered on the platform. Clubs can be accessed by anyone, but they require a form of social currency to unlock the “gaming experiences” associated with the creators’ offerings. The startup earns a commission from these transactions.
As of now, the primary attraction appears to be in-app currency since it is redeemable as vouchers for e-commerce stores like Amazon, PhonePe, and Flipkart. Other than that, users can also earn currency through referrals, spin to win wheels, and daily log in bonuses.
It seems that monetization is what sets STAN apart., earning rewards through interactions like in-app chatting differs from Discord where chatting and participating in communities does not earn users anything of value apart from social reputation.
“STAN is the hangout place for gamers. It’s a place where gamers come and make friends, play with each other, talk to each other; sort of a fusion of social and gaming.” said co-founder and CEO of STAN, Parth Chadha, in an Interview.
Chadha gives credit to the platform’s features for attracting users so far. At first, the platform supported streams only through scheduled creator contacts, but the company’s new policy, granting free access to livestreams, was an important turning point for both engagement and downloads according to the Chief Executive Officer.
STAN collaborates with game publishers and studios including Granton, Garena, and Roblox who sponsor the startup to link them with creators and gamers on the platform.
Chadha reported to TechCrunch that during the last two quarters, the platform was adopted by almost 100 game publishers, studios, and developers. The platform adds over 20 new clients every month.
“That is turning into a very interesting business stream as we speak.”
In the coming future, STAN is set to use the Google investment to employ AI in enhancing console moderation.
As reported by Chadha, 70% to 80% of moderation on STAN is performed by AI. The remaining work done by a human moderation team is targeted for elimination through AI enhancements.
STAN also aims to offer creators AI-based toolkits that will automate the creation of avatars and memes, as well as chat greetings and the filtering of chat messages.
There are many plug-and-play models that we and the Google team are working on to leverage and scale the business,” he said.
Toonsutra, an immersive comic-reading experience powered by AI, was the first Indian startup to be backed by Google’s AI Futures Fund.
TechCrunch learned from Google that they have invested more than $5.5 billion in India, which includes spending on Indian startups like Toonsutra, STAN, Pixxel, and Adda247.
STAN’s app is currently geo-restricted to India, but the platform still gets 5% to 6% engagement from international users who access the app with Indian phone numbers and accounts. With India as the initial target, the startup plans to expand to the rest of the subcontinent before moving on to Southeast Asia and Latin America.
The startup was profitable for a few months, the CEO said, but decided to spend to scale. With new initiatives underway, STAN now expects to turn profitable by 2027.
The company currently has about 40 employees, with nearly 30 of them in product engineering.