According to Statista, the online gaming market is predicted to be worth over US$ 174 billion by 2021, and this sector has been dominated by the Asia Pacific region for years. With Southeast Asia’s steadily growing online population, thanks to increased internet penetration and smartphone usage, its mobile games market is the fastest-growing in the world. Amidst these trends, startups like ZeusX are unsurprisingly thriving.
Singapore-based ZeusX is a digital marketplace for gamers all over the world — enabling them to buy and sell gaming assets like accounts, in-game items, top-ups, services, gift cards and collectibles in a secure online environment.
In a nutshell, ZeusX eliminates the challenges of lack of transparency and security in online trade in the gaming space and provides gamers with a secure platform to trade virtual assets at competitive rates.
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Launched in March 2020, ZeusX recently revamped their platform earlier this month to include more product categories. Despite launching at a time where the economic climate is probably at its worst as seen in decades, ZeusX has attracted thousands of interested parties from some 85 countries.
Alex Tay, the Founder & CEO of ZeusX, shared with e27 that he has been an obsessed gamer since he was nine. In fact, it was his passion towards gaming that led him to leave a 17-year old flourishing corporate career in the Insurance & Banking sector so he could chase his dreams full-time, and build a career in the gaming world.
Mobile gaming: Emerging trends and tech disruptions
Tay believes that mobile gaming is the future and he is not wrong. In Singapore alone, players spent a total of $327.2 million on mobile games last year. In the online population, 74% of men and 68% of women play mobile games as of 2019.
Tay foresees two fundamental technology disruptions that can potentially change the “game”: 5G and hyper-personalization.
“Telcos are already working with cloud gaming providers to eventually be able to deliver and stream high-end quality games on mobile that were previously only available on console and PC,” he said.
Tay added, “just imagine, 5 to 10 years ago, what we were watching at home was dependent on what devices we owned—cable, DVD or BluRay. Now, everyone streams HD movies from Netflix at any time to any smartphone while sitting on the train, and I believe that gaming is heading towards that direction”.
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Furthermore, the prevalence of AI and Big Data technologies are also changing the gaming landscape and there is a need to create highly personalized experiences for gamers.
Tay added that it is not a coincidence that their platform focuses on mobile games and that they are trying to differentiate with personalization and community integration. “We truly believe that is the future, and we have been innovating towards that vision from Day 1,” he shared.
What’s next
ZeusX plan to continue refining their offerings to achieve wider adoption with a primary focus on the Southeast Asian market given its massive potential.
Tay recalls that one of their very first transactions was by a gamer based out of Texas, USA who traded with a fellow gamer based in Slovenia.
“We want to leverage that global capability, and empower gamers in our regional market, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam, so they are able to easily trade with anyone in the world without worrying about payments and security,” he said.
Addressing challenges
The key challenge for ZeusX is catering to the diverse demographics of the Southeast Asian market, while still operating as a global marketplace. Each of the eleven countries within Southeast Asia has its own national language, preferred payment methods and spending patterns.
“While there is a big difference between supporting a global versus a local market, we also think it opens up vast opportunities for gamers anywhere to monetize their efforts, skills and virtual assets to appreciative gamers elsewhere in the world. We will pick one market and try to get it to work before getting ahead of ourselves,” Tay explains.
With more capital and access to better resources, they can slowly and steadily scale across the region.
To find better connectivity and in the pursuit of expanding their network, ZeusX has signed up for an e27 Pro membership so they can easily explore funding opportunities and discover relevant incubation programmes.
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“We were the most attracted to the membership due to the e27 Connect feature as it makes our search for potential investors super easy. Plus, other perks that came along are a bonus. We have been leveraging the benefits of the membership to offset our costs in AWS, Hubspot and Zendesk,” Tay shared.
He added, “our e27 Pro membership has helped us yield 8 direct introductions to notable VCs, plus a few more indirect referrals. It has addressed our issue of getting interested investors to talk to us as an early-stage startup and also given us insights into what VCs are specifically looking for.”
Despite the COVID-19 crisis and the ongoing economic upheaval, ZeusX has managed to not only launch themselves in the market this year but also establish a considerable user interest. With the rising mobile gaming industry, ZuesX’s innovative vision, and support form the e27 Pro membership, we can only expect great things from this startup.
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