A Journey Called Life: What is Zapak !

What is Zapak ! ! Sounds like the sound of something flat being pasted on the wall?

You are near. That is what comes to my mind when I see the billboards being pasted across the cityscape. Get gaming, it says.

Today I saw Salman Khan telling me to visit Zapak. And I just did! Zapak is a Free Gaming site, and have huge plans in the offing.

It is Owned by Anil Ambani so many is not a problem. Get the eyeballs, he must have told Mr Rajesh Sawhney, President, Reliance entertainment Ltd. Or rather, their finger on the keyboards.

. It so very reminds of the Hometrade.com days.

All those Billboards with Hritik Roshan, Sachin tendulkar, and who not? Hometrade died, maybe for the wrong reason but it died. Ok but then Hometrade was started in the wrong time, and the owners were seedy.

And eHarmony have proven that TV and other offline media can be used to build an online brand, and generate revenues and scale. But then what eharmony did was to use the money they generate from membership fees to get more customers who paid membership fees. And Indian Internet users are still wary of paying for some online service, unless it is for finding a suitable groom or bride.

Even then, the matrimonial sites are going offline as well. Some converting the free members into paying ones won't be a wise idea for Zapak. do have plans to start Kiosks all over the country, and is investing a whopping hundred Million Dollars, unheard of by any Indian Internet Company.

The kiosks might not be a bad idea, what with most of the reliance webworld users being gamers ( on a casual observation, 1/3rd the seats in most R-world cyber cafes are playing games). But then, would gamers only want to play games at zapak.com, the gaming portal?

About the only thing I like about Zapak, and this press release, is that the $ 100 million investment will also be used to set-up a development centre. With such Investments, I can see, zapak growing or evolving into an IT services company on the Gaming Vertical, with a few products, but mostly outsourced Product development.