Want serious skilled gamers to come onto the platform: Lakshmi Idupuganti, A23

Online rummy and poker card games portal A23, operated by Head Digital Works, recently announced its latest campaign ‘Yahan Dimaag Jeetega’ campaign featuring brand ambassador Shah Rukh Khan. For the past three years, the online games portal ran the campaign, ‘Chalo Saath Khelein with A23’ with an aim to make people aware of the platform A23 and associate it with online rummy and online poker. The campaign targeted everyone interested in rummy and poker and invited them to the platform. Currently, A23 has over 75 million registered
users across India.

Now three years on, as the gamer in India has evolved, the need now arose to talk to the serious gamers more closely. This campaign champions the accomplishment that comes from using their gaming skills to win. With a focus on strategic thinking and the application of skill, the evolved messaging aligns with A23's action-oriented and customer-centric stance. Lakshmi Idupuganti, Senior Director - Brand and Design, Head Digital Works (A23) explains, “This is our third campaign with Shah Rukh Khan. We repositioned the brand message to target skilled players and that’s why we did ‘Yahan Dimaag Jeetega’. We are targeting people who appreciate a good challenge and a reward. They are more strategic in their gameplay and are there solely for their skill, to take on big challenges and win rewards.” She continues, “We want serious skilled gamers to come onto the platform and play as against having the casual gamers. This campaign also talks about one upmanship and outsmarting the other to win. On the product level, we want to offer challenges that will attract professional players.”

This strategy is in line with A23’s mission to promote Rummy and Poker as a professional game and create a community of skilled gamers. It is estimated that there are 90 million to 100 million real money gamers in India, who average a playtime of 8 to 9 hours a week and is predominantly male-skewed. Idupuganti says, “Rummy is played more in Tier II and Tier III towns while poker is played more in the city. We target customers from the age of 23 to 45.

Pitch for responsible gaming

In October to coincide with the festive season, A23 launched ‘Limit gaming, not celebrations’ campaign and last month released ‘More friend time. Less gaming time’ campaign both with cricketer, Smriti Mandhana as part of its A23 Cares initiative. A23 Cares is an initiative by the online gaming portal to raise awareness about healthy practices while playing online real-money games. As a caution against addiction to online gaming, this integration on real money gaming platforms encourages self-control amongst gamers and further safeguard their interests. Pushing forth the narrative of Responsible Gaming, this initiative encourages all A23 users to place
daily limits, set budgets and take regular breaks to enjoy online games in a healthy environment.

Idupuganti explains, “Trust is a major factor in A23 Cares because if you put your money in as Online Real Money Gaming (RMG) and win, you want your money back without any fraud. We want to create a safe, responsible and enjoyable playing experience. While we innovate with our product, we want to instill responsible gaming habit among all our players. That's our goal and narrative.” She continues, “When we make a campaign which pushes a feature or a product, we always follow it up with an A23 Cares campaign. Every campaign we launched with Shah
Rukh Khan, we always launch an A23 campaign before that and then take the main campaign. We want to attract and retain these loyal customers. It's not just about them playing on the platform for a short while. We want to build trust, drive growth in a positive way and create a social impact while we're doing that.”

Some of the initiatives undertaken by A23 to manage the players’ gaming habit include security measures and protocols such as encouraging them to set time limit for gaming, add a monthly budget, take regular breaks, stop playing during work, not to chase losses by setting a loss limit and to play with a good frame of mind. A23 also has self-assessment tools where users can take a questionnaire and identify areas of concern. On its part, the online gaming portal does a behavioral analysis to track user behavior and gameplay and identify risky playing patterns and reaches out to players to nudge them to take a break. Idupuganti states, “It's not always about asking them to get on the platform and play. The campaign with Smriti Mandhana has been done beautifully where she encourages players to stop everything they are doing and celebrate the festive season with family and friends. We used Mandhana as an influencer and she delivered the message beautifully for us.” She adds, “We will continue the A23 cares narrative in the future. This is something that will always going on for us. We own the space as we were the first in the category to talk about responsible gaming. We have a lot more in the coming years for our
customers and hopefully year-on-year, we will do more for them and build trust. We want to sustain the longterm health of our customers and in turn have a sustainable gaming industry and we're here to stay. We want to create a more healthy, responsible, and sustainable gaming experience and keep on innovating and launching products for the customers.”

No to a poker face

In November 2024, Head Digital Works launched A23 Poker desktop app to accelerate its growth in the online poker sector. The brand also rolled out a campaign with the message, "Whatever is on your mind, let it show. No poker face, just play poker!" Taking a pun on the expression, ‘A Poker Face’, the campaign highlighted the thrill of online poker, where players can freely express themselves without the need for a traditional poker face. The aim is to uplift the overall gaming experience and set A23 Poker apart in the competitive market.

Idupuganti states, “When we launched the poker campaign, ‘Whatever is on your mind, let it show. No poker face, just play poker!,’ it was to tell people that you don't need to have a poker face but it's your game and you and you can play and win. We created ads that would target entry level new people who just started learning. We targeted high value poker players differently. We tried to get everybody onto the platform. and I think it was a clutter breaking campaign compared to anything else anyone has done in the category.

Talking about the creative process behind a campaign Idupuganti says that when you're selling a feature, the feature is designed in a way that there is a requirement for it. However, when it comes to a brand campaign, it's more about understanding the customer through research, listening to them, what are their affinities and then trying to draw an insight on their aspirations. On the future plans she says. “We are looking to grow our poker business significantly in 2025 and that's where most of our focus is going to be. We're also looking at new game formats for Rummy. We are aiming to push our brand awareness a few notches up. So, you're going to see a lot of
us.”