Thursday, June 11, 2020

Pocket Aces’ Loco and Red Bull tie-up to fuel the growth of esports in India

National, 11th  June 2020: Loco, India’s leading live game streaming platform, and Red Bull, the manufacturer of the world’s leading energy drink, today announced an industry-defining esports partnership with a mission of transforming esports into popular culture.
The partnership will see Red Bull and Loco working together to create and broadcast esports content across various game categories. Red Bull has always operated at the cutting edge of sports entertainment and has played a key role in creating sustainable ecosystems for athletes and sports. Red Bull now teams up with Loco, which is home to one of the largest gaming communities in the country, to serve the fast growing esports ecosystem in India which today consists of over 600 million gamers.
The partnership will kickstart with the live broadcast of the finale of the ongoing “Red Bull Flick” tournament on Loco. This popular CS GO (CounterStrike) tournament is designed to discover the most talented gamers in India and is set to take place on Saturday, 13th JuneThe Loco-Red Bull partnership will also cover events such as Red Bull MEO (which will focus on mobile arcade games like pubg mobile) and Red Bull R1v1r Ruins (which will focus on Dota). The companies will work together to create additional events which will be announced soon.
Indian Counter-Strike Pro & Red Bull India’s first gaming athlete, Ankit 'V3nom' Panth, said, “I am really happy to see such great participation in Red Bull Flick. I think we made all the 6 cups full within 4 days. This shows the passion of our community. I know we are going to see some great matches in the national finals on 13th June. Red Bull Flick is a great platform to showcase your aiming skills. India is known to have players with good aim but they find it difficult to make a team and compete. Red Bull Flick is a great initiative to help such gamers and put them out there. Additionally, I am equally excited to see Red Bull partner with a game streaming and esports platform like Loco to broadcast the finals which definitely gives us access to one of the largest gaming communities in India.”
Speaking about the partnership, Anirudh Pandita, Founder, Pocket Aces, said, “India’s gaming ecosystem continues to grow rapidly and gaming has now permeated the Indian consumer’s entertainment experience in a meaningful manner. Our mission as a company is to help consumers fight boredom and we are pleased to partner with Red Bull in our journey.  Red Bull has actively appreciated and promoted esports globally over the last few years and we hope to work with them to provide wings to the flight of the esports community.”
The Red Bull-Loco association will not only offer a platform to aspiring gamers in India to showcase their talent but also fuel the growth of this industry; placing India on top of the global esports map. Recently, Loco partnered with Fnatic, a leading professional esports organization headquartered in London, United Kingdom for a PUBG Mobile charity tournament called #GamingForGood.

About Pocket Aces:
With a mission to solve boredom for the 400+ million Indians online, Pocket Aces is India's leading digital entertainment company focused on mobile video. The company operates five socially distributed content brands: FilterCopy (short videos), Dice Media (multi-episode web series), Gobble (food, travel, home videos), Jambo (young-adult animation) and Nutshell (infotainment videos), as well as a direct-to-consumer platform: Loco (e-sports streaming platform).
The company's socially distributed video network has amassed >12 billion video views with a current run rate of over 500 Million monthly views. Following the success of Dice Media’s marquee webseries Little Things on YouTube and Facebook (garnering more than 200 million minutes watched), Season 2 and 3 were picked up as Netflix Originals and aired in more than 193 countries, in 5 different languages. Loco, is one of the fastest growing apps in the country today with more than 23 million registered users with active users spending over 30 minutes daily on the app. The company has grown its team strength to 210 with offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi.
Pocket Aces has worked extensively with large advertisers including PepsiCo, Flipkart, Amazon, Samsung, One Plus, Google, Kingfisher, Kotak Mahindra Bank, etc. The company's content has also been syndicated to various OTT platforms such as Ola Play and Reliance Jio, airlines such as Emirates and Cathay Pacific, cable partners such as Tata Sky, and international platforms such as China's Youku Tudou and Bytedance.
Major investors in Pocket Aces include Sequoia Capital, North Base Media, 3one4 Capital and the co-founders of India's largest IT services firm, Infosys. In July 2019, the company announced a ₹100 crore investment from Sequoia India, DSP Group and 3one4 Capital, besides other prominent investors.

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