SoStronk is a third-party playing platform, which provides game servers and in-game experiences to players with localised servers to compete in
By Navanwita Bora Sachdev
SoStronk was recently in the news for partnering with AFK Gaming to pick the new all-Indian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) team for the North American esports organisation, OpTic Gaming. SoStronk CEO Prashant Prabhakar talks about the rise of esports in India and SoStronk’s future plans. The 31-year old esports enthusiast has been competing in CS since he was 15, which is also the game of
choice the Sostronk platform offers.
“Esports was not a full-fledged domain like right now. It was more like a basement hobby slash passion.
However, I learnt a lot through all those experiences I got back then,” he says.
As a pro player in the US, Singapore, and Europe, Prabhakar tried roles like coaching, analysing, commentating, and journalism for esports sites. After graduating, he decided to bring the same playing platform as US and Europe to Bengaluru, which he thought was crucial to the ecosystem in this side of the world.
He teamed up with Karan Mishra, the SoStronk CTO, in late 2014, and they started working on building a team. They went live to market subscription in 2016 and now have a 12-man strong team. AFK, who are Dota specialists, also do content and journalism for esports. With SoStronk’s speciality in CS and AFK’s in Dota, they serve different needs for the same clients, catering to most of the esports IT in India.
“We work very closely with AFK. Apart from the OpTic project, we are also happy working alongside them for other projects,” Prabhakar says.
Features of SoStronk
The esports landscape comprises tech platforms, like sports betting, fantasy football, and third-party streaming. SoStronk is a third-party playing platform, which provides game servers and in-game experiences to players with localised servers to compete in. SoStronk provides features in CS 1, which the base game might not be fulfilling for a player.
Most users can access games for free. Paying customers or subscribers can opt for ‘scrimming’, which is like a team vs. team competition mode used for practice. Players can also practice module servers for individuals, have access to leaderboards, prizes, advanced statistics, as well as other small beneficiary toggles, like being able to set their ‘ping’ to get more preferred server locations.
SoStronk’s strongest suit is their development team, which uses advanced algorithms for their platform. Everything is built on Google Go Line and they work with CUTE framework for the app. With cutting-edge tech, they deliver advanced statistic metrics, so that gamers get impact reading to determine the most impactful player in a particular game.
“To give a comparison with soccer or football, imagine a world where the only statistics you had were goals. For a long time, we only had that. Now, we can get special statistics for every position a player plays. A striker is measured by goals and a defender by tackles, so that’s kind of what impact reading is for CS, which has multiple roles. We try to measure all the different aspects based on the kind of kill and how impactful the kill was. That’s a very complex algorithm that we are quite proud of,” he explains.
SoStronk Future Plans
Currently, SoStronk is present in India, Singapore, Hongkong, and Taiwan in Southeast Asia, and Mongolia. SoStronk plans to focus on doubling down on Southeast Asia, because the market there, similar to India, is growing fast, especially in terms of gamers having more access to CS. Outside of that, the company will be looking at more emerging markets.
“We learnt a lot of lessons from tackling the emerging market of India, and the same lessons are going to apply to other emerging markets that are on the cusp of booming,” Prabhakar says.
Entrepreneurship in Esports
Prabhakar says it is difficult being an entrepreneur in esports, especially since there isn’t much awareness regarding the ecosystem. “If my company was based out of Germany, I wouldn’t have the same struggles as I have had in India, but then, I wouldn’t have the same opportunities either, because India is an untapped market for me to capitalise on, whereas in Germany, there would be competition,” he explains.
In an immature market like India, esports is still not mainstream. Thus, pitching to investors can often be challenging. Still, companies like Nodwin Gaming have raised substantial investment from notable companies.
“It’s a booming industry with a lot of potential. More and more people are taking interest. This year, I met investors with a lot of knowledge of esports, which was probably not the case a year ago,” he says.