GameFan-Gaming & Esports Fandom

[IMPACT] Please describe your proposed solution.

GameFan is a fan platform for 2.7B gamers worldwide (including 400M esports fans) that lets these fans celebrate gaming & esports fandom in the most innovative, engaging and fun ways .. We acquire 300 of the top global gaming & esports licenses exclusively with <500k fan following, aggregate the fans of these licenses on our platform, sell NFT’s create on the content of the licenses to the fans, and create world class next-gen experiences for the fans that grows & deepens their relationship with this industry as well promote trading of these NFT’s and other assets like land parcels on GameFan platform.

Our Revenue channels:

1. First hand NFT sales (Accounts to 10% of total revenue)
2. First hand Virtual land parcel sales (Accounts to 10% of total revenue)
3. 5% commission of marketplace fan to fan sales (Accounts to 80% of total revenue)

Our industry stakeholders:

1. Gaming events organizers
2. Esports Tournaments organizers
3. Gaming Influencers
4. Esports Clubs/Teams/Athletes
5. Game Publishers
6. Gaming & Esports Cosplayers
7. Gaming & esports fans

Who benefits from GameFan’s success: All stakeholders, how?

1. GameFan is creating a new revenue stream for Gaming events, Esports Organizers, Esports Clubs/Teams/Athletes, Gaming Influencers as well as onboarding new passionate fans by addressing to the larger TAM of 2.7b gamers
2. GameFan is promoting the top esports & AAA game titles and bringing new gamers to these gamers by connecting our community directly to the game publishers through our platform
3. GameFan is creating the next generation of experiences for global gaming & esports fans to celebrate their passion for gaming & esports and bringing them together on a single world-class next-gen fan community platform

[IMPACT] Please describe how your proposed solution will address the Challenge that you have submitted it in.

1. While the full gaming & esports content is monetised by TV, Online streaming, and OTT broadcasters; highlights (iconic moments) from the content are given for free as part of this dea

2a. GameFan club is a unique fan membership club, which give fans access to a plethora of utilities by merely owning one of GameFan’s NFT’s; some real world utilities examples are VIP access to esports events, meet & greets with gaming & esports celebrities, signed merchandise, access to GameFan club gatherings/parties ..

2b. GameFan Virtual City is one of our key virtual world utility, a fully licensed metaverse for global gaming & esports fans. We look forward to upgrade this city with the latest advancements in technology to create experiences such as VR interactivity, exclusive content consumption in VR, land ownership for stakeholders, fans and brands, GFX upgrades with Unreal engine 5, avatar upgrades with Readyplayer.me, interoperability with 3rd party Metaverses, etc..

2c. GameFan is a community platform with DAO to let gaming & esports fan vote on the development & governance of GameFan engaging them further with our platform

2d. Other utilities for fans are fantasy esports, largest discord gaming community, discounts & access to in-game purchase as well as event purchases + 20 more ..

We recommend you go through our detailed deck to understand it more in detail, Link here: https://brieflink.com/v/aotc0

[IMPACT] What are the main risks that could prevent you from delivering the project successfully and please explain how you will mitigate each risk?

1.Capex - Since we are a fully licensed platform, we take exclusive 4-year renewable licenses from top industry stakeholders, these are expensive licenses, our total expenditure over 6 months is roughly $300M, which is a challenge at the moment.

2. Tech advancements - GameFan is not a first-hand technology company, we rely on other companies like Cardano for blockchain, VR software & hardware creators (Google, HTC, Occulus, Meta, Apple, etc) for VR technology, Readyplayer.me for Avatars, Unreal Engine for Metaverse GFX, etc to build the best technology; the quality of our offerings differ as per the advancements in applicable relevant technologies however we will partner with these companies in the long run to create the best of offerings for our community, the gaming fans.

3. Community acceptance - Gaming & esports industry has not accepted web3 technology yet and look at it negatively, largely due to web3 profit runs and environment damage caused by existing blockchains; we look to solve this by building on Cardano - an environment friendly blockchain. Digital scams are very common in gaming and building on Cardano - the most secure blockchain to date, helps mitigate the risks of future scams and hacks for our community.

4. Smaller competitors - Due to our business model relying highly on licenses acquisition, we need to advance to acquire these licenses quickly before smaller players with a short term profit making vision spoil the market, hence we are looking at large investments round in short duration to avoid this scenario. Once we sign these licenses, then our entire focus shifts to building. These 300 licenses follow a First right of refusal to GameFan clause, ensuring we are able to renew these licenses at the end of 4 year duration, ensuring longer a long term strategy for our community. On the launch of our metaverse, we import these licenses to our metaverse for fans to interact with the experiences build on each licenses virtual land space on GameFan Metaverse.

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed plan, including timeline and key milestones for delivering your proposal.

Our strengths & energy are solely focussed on developing GameFan. As an NFT aggregator in gaming & esports, we focus on 300 of the top gaming & esports licenses globally with a fan following of <500k each up to 120M

Platform Timeline:

Stage 1 - Nov/Dec 2022 - GameFan platform launch: Website, NFT’s minting, marketplace, wallet live + 15/300 AAA & AA licenses acquired

Stage 2 - Feb/Mar 2022: More new NFT’s live, first set of community utilities live, Beta App live + 30/300 licenses acquired

Stage 3 - May2023: More new NFT’s live, second set of community utilities live + 150/300 licenses acquired

Stage 4 - June/March 2023: More new NFT’s live + third set of community utilities live + Gamefan Virtual City (Metaverse) live + 300/300 licenses acquired

Stage 5 - Aug 2023: More new NFT’s live + VR upgrade to GameFan Metaverse

Stage 6 - Oct 2023: More new NFT’s live + gaming & esports full content broadcasting in GameFan Metaverse live

KonmaLabz and GameFan will collaborate on their strengths, Konmalabz will bring in the technical expertise and developer's and GameFan will bring in gaming related expertise. tasks will assigned story points and a team wholly meant for this collaboration will be made upon successful funding

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide a detailed budget breakdown.

The current grant we seek of $500K is an opex budget. Our investment cycle is shared below:

Pre-seed round (includes Grants) - $1M - June/July 2022 (Catalyst grant of $500k is part of this) - to be used for OPEX for next 6 months i.e paying salaries for team + other operating costs for company setup, remote working softwares subscriptions, domain subscriptions, bank accounts setup, etc

Seed round - $20M - August/Sept 2022 - to be used for primarily for CAPEX, 90% To be used to sign 15/300 ecosystem licenses

Series A - $152M (includes a token round) - Nov 2022 - to be used for primarily for CAPEX, 80% to be used to sign 150/300 ecosystem licenses, the remainder 20% for platform development + opex for next 1 year

Series B - $150M - Jan 2023 - 95% to be used to sign 300/300 ecosystem licenses 300/300 + remainder 5% allotted to product development fund for Gamefan Metaverse

[FEASIBILITY] Please provide details of the people who will work on the project.

Tech - Built inhouse with support from partners such as Konma Labs & individual advisors

Gaming & Esports Partnerships - Managed inhouse with support of Global Influencer marketing agencies & Individual advisors

Marketing - Managed inhouse while partnering with global marketing agencies

Community - Managed 100% inhouse with support from agencies like LXG and WeHype

PR - Managed inhouse while partnering with global PR agencies

HR & People & Team Management - Managed inhouse with usage of remote working softwares such as Slack, Jira, Notion, Confluence, Deel, BoB, Safetywing, etc.

1. Founder & CEO - Anup Dustakar - 34 yrs - Indian - Professional esports athlete for India in DOTA 2, Founding member of NODWIN Gaming - India’s market leader in esports industry, ex-Marketing Strategy Lead for Fancraze, ex-Marketing Manager HP India for Gaming, 12+ years of experience in global gaming & esports industry - Indian
2. Director & Head of Operations + Marketing - Raj Vadhavkar - 3x Entrepreneur in gaming, esports & Medical hardware industry, 8+ years of industry experience - Indian
3. Head of Partnerships - Sharmistha Mukherjee - Pilot, Marketing, Design & Community expert, 8+ years of industry experience - Indian
4. Partnerships Advisor - Lalit Vase (Indian) - 2x Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Middle-east’s full service gaming & esports market agency, exited with $200M - Power League Gaming, Founder of NASR Esports - Middle-east & Africa’s no.1 esports club and content creator house
5. Tech, Content & Development partner - Konma Labs - Innovators & builders on Cardano blockchain - Co-founded by Vinay Devabhuktani & Sangeet Muralidhar + 1 (India)Sangeet Muralidhar Co-Founder, Head of Tech, Konma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sangeet-muralidhar/ . Vinay Devabhakthuni Founder, Head of R&D, Konma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/vinay-devabhaktuni-b642bb90/ . Advitha Ashok - Co-Founder, Head of Operations, Konma - https://www.linkedin.com/in/advitha-ashok-178394122/ . Santhanu haskell advisor for industry applications https://www.linkedin.com/in/santanuchat

1. PR Partner - Storymob (Europe + UK + US) + Damage (US) + 4wd Gaming (India + ME)
2. Community Partner - LXG (India) + WeHype (Europe + US)
3. Investments Advisor - Aparajit Sudhakar - Principal at Boston Consulting Group - Indian
4. Partnerships Partner - Wehype (Europe + US)

Total gaming & esports industry experience - 30+ years

Overall Total Team experience - 50+ years

Total Team Size - 14 (excluding partners)

Current Full time colleagues - 4

Current interns - 5

Current advisors - 5

Current partners - 5

[FEASIBILITY] If you are funded, will you return to Catalyst in a later round for further funding? Please explain why / why not.

Given the scale of the project, we would need a second round of fund once we reach the milestones set out for this project.

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or any member of your team working on any other proposals in this Fund9?

[FEASIBILITY] Are you or your team working on any other proposals from previous Funds?

[AUDITABILITY] Please describe what you will measure to track your project's progress, and how will you measure these?

KPI’s mentioned below tracked via GameFan platform Analytics:

1. Revenue
2. Investments
3. Profit
4. Registrations
5. Discord Users
6. NFT’s minted
7. Transactions
8. Active users
9. NFT Packs Sold (NFT’s are sold randomly as part of packs)
10. Ecosystem Licenses owned

[AUDITABILITY] What does success for this project look like?

Expected Projections across 1 year:

1. Expected Revenue: $1B
2. Investments: <$300M
3. Profit: 10M
4. Registrations: 10M gamers
5. Discord Users: 5M gamers
6. NFT’s minted: 1.2M
7. Transactions: 1.2M
8. Active users: 1.2M
9. NFT Packs Sold (NFT’s are sold randomly as part of packs): 400K
10. Licenses owned: 300

[AUDITABILITY] Please provide information on whether this proposal is a continuation of a previously funded project in Catalyst or an entirely new one.

This is a new proposal.