Interview

Bizmey CEO Arfan Chaudhry on how competition will drive innovation in mobile monetisation strategies

Plus the untapped market of Indonesia gamers

Bizmey CEO Arfan Chaudhry on how competition will drive innovation in mobile monetisation strategies
New Canadian mobile monetisation outfit Bizmey has just come out of stealth mode and is currently revealing details how it intends to compete in a market already full of established and emerging players.

We caught up with founder and CEO Arfan Chaudhry to find out more about the company and its plans.

PocketGamer: What's the background to Bizmey?

Arfan Chaudhry: Bizmey was founded on the notion of 'Do what you love and love what you do,' and in the pursuit of our passion: technology, games, marketing, mobile, and business.

We love what we do. Every single person in the team is a gamer and a tech freak.

You're based in Canada and have an office in Indonesia. Why?

Toronto is where I was raised and it's a city that I love. Also, some great mobile application developers are from Toronto such as Polar Mobile and Uken Games.

The reason I chose Indonesia as our second office is because I firmly believe Jakarta is a rapidly growing technology city in Asia. One of my great friends is from Jakarta. I asked him to join the team and he gladly hopped onboard.

Another thing I noticed when I was developing games on Facebook is Indonesia has a vast amount of gamers but monetising them is very hard, which we plan to find a solution for.

Finally, Indonesia has a vast amount of BlackBerry users; something we plan to focus on. However, later this year, we will be on the look out for an office in Silicon Valley too.

There are plenty of companies already doing mobile per install/incentivisation. How do you expect to compete?

I think competition makes companies come up with new creative innovation to beat their competitors. At the moment we are working on a few things that I can't mention yet, but that we will be announcing over the next few weeks.

I can say we're focusing heavily on great customer service and listening to our developers.

Why do you think the incentivisation model is sustainable?

The reason advertisers will pay for incentive installs is that it's cheap and an easy way to drive volume and beat the App Store's ranking system.

Of course, there is an issue with some users deleting the application right away, but there will be users who find interesting applications they've not heard about before through such installs.

You're covering iOS and Android. What differences do you see between the two?

I use both an iPhone and Android phone and think both platforms have done a great job, but because I'm a loyal Apple fan, I'm probably a bit biased. I believe Apple users are much more willing to fork out money compared to Android users. Apple users are used to paying the price for high quality products.

In contrast, many Android users have the OS because the device cost $100 or was free on contract. Someone who has paid top dollar for their iPhone is much more likely to purchase virtual goods versus the person who got a cheap phone. I'm not saying all Android phones are cheap, but finding Android phones and tablets for $100 is now extremely easy.

Thanks to Arfan for his time.

You can see what Bizmey gets up to via its website.
Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.