← The Digital Executive
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- [00:00]
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Foreign.
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Welcome to Coruscant Technologies, home of the Digital Executive Podcast. Do you work in emerging tech? Working on something innovative? Maybe an entrepreneur? Apply to be a guest at www.corazon.com brand welcome to the Digital Executive. Today's guest is Ashish Aggarwal. Ashish Aggarwal is the co founder of App Rota, a leading no code ad network that is reshaping how mobile apps and games maximize their monetization potential. Under his strategic leadership, App Rota has collaborated with more than 2,000 casual and hyper casual game developers, collectively driving over 2 billion annual recurring revenue across its global network. The platform empowers developers by offering automated data driven tools that streamline user acquisition and optimize ad revenue without requiring any coding expertise. By combining automation with intelligent insights, App Rota makes high performance monetization accessible to teams of all sizes, helping developers focus on building great products while the platform manages optimization at scale well. Good afternoon Ashish, welcome to the show.
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B
Hey Brian, thanks. Thanks for having me.
- [01:19]
A
Absolutely my friend. I appreciate you making the time hailing out of Delhi, India today or this evening for you and early here in Kansas City. So again I appreciate you navigating schedules. So Ashish, jumping into your first question, Rota is transforming monetization with no code automation first approach. What were the biggest friction points you saw during your time at Google that convinced you a platform like this is needed to exist?
- [01:46]
B
That's a great question Brian, and it kind of sets the stage for a larger ecosystem challenge that I saw when I was at Google. In the world of innovation when it comes to apps and games. As a B2B solution provider right when I was at Google I interacted with thousands of developers for apps and games and also a wide range of B2B and SaaS providers for those app and game developers. Some of them had absolutely phenomenal, amazing innovations. These were young startups as well as mid sized companies. But the number one friction point they all hit when speaking to app developers was trying to sell their solution via an SDK or via code that actually requires the app developer to put it into his or her app or game. The app developers they spoke to absolutely hated adding any more code which made the app or game heavier for users and could lead to crashes or any user data being leaked. So they did not want to work with any unbranded or new company in the market that was selling a software development kit or SDK for short, and they didn't want to add any code to the app or game to hamper the user experience. And they were also a bit afraid of the Play Store and Apple Store policies. So on one side you had amazing new solutions for this growing market of app and game developers, but on the other side, every time they would speak to them, they would say, oh, do you have this without an SDK? And hence, when we set out to build app Roda, we were very clear that we want to have a no code, no SDK approach selling to app and game developers.
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A
That's amazing. And you did obviously saw that need when you were at Google. And I can see how a lot of these apps can be bloated with that additional code, that SDK. And of course, at the end of the day, if you want to be successful, you have to provide a great customer experience and you can't do that when you have bloated apps with possible, as you said, data leaks too, if you've got information in there as well. So I really, really appreciate that. And Ashish, you've collaborated with more than 2,000 game developers, contributing to over 2 billion in annual reoccurring revenue. What separates the studios that consistently monetize well from those that struggle?
- [04:10]
B
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I'd first like to share an interesting stat to preface my answer. We found in the last three years that only 0.6% of games developed in the world are actually published on the Play and Apple Store at any meaningful scale. The rest of the games that people build are just assets that are lying, unpublished or were published and didn't get any growth. So it's a very, very brutal industry for game developers and studios where you only have a 0.6% chance of becoming like a really big game in the world. What we found out, Brian, in the last three years that studios that consistently monetize well have three things in common. A, they have systems in house that are data driven to AB test game mechanics, user acquisition and monetization of those users. Secondly, they have teams that have a very deep tribal knowledge almost of how the gaming ecosystem works. And they also have a unique characteristic in their team that they're always ready to adapt and experiment since this industry goes through a disruption every couple of years. And lastly, we saw that all of the gaming studios that have succeeded over a period of time had access to a large amount of capital to either create games in house or to buy other games that were doing well in the market. Right. And consistently we've seen that in this market, if you have these three attributes, even if you are building in the same genre, like A casual game or a puzzle game, or even if you're building the exact same game, like a candy crush replica, you need to have these three things to really stand out from the other developers.
- [05:58]
A
That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. That stat is interesting that those last three years, anyway,.0.6 apps are actually published or in the app store, at least successful as you talked about and what makes those successful game app developers. You talked about how the gaming system works, the adaptation, monetization, access to capital, et cetera. And I think that's really important. So thank you for sharing those insights. And Ashish, the rise of hyper casual and casual gaming has changed the economics of mobile. How do you see monetization strategies evolving as user habits and privacy policies continue to shift?
- [06:37]
B
Yeah, so I think our industry in mobile ad tech went through this change around about the pandemic time where for the hyper casual and casual games, like you rightly said, they were very dependent on in app ads or ad monetization revenue. Right. For this, for this genre of games. Right. And suddenly they faced this new world where users wanted privacy, privacy became a focus and suddenly ads, which are inherently built on not really adhering to strict levels of privacy, were suddenly faced with a new business model. What's interesting, Brian, is what we actually saw was that users actually did not mind ads that much, nor did they necessarily have an issue with their data being used to show relevant ads. However, the stakeholder in our industry that had an issue with this was actually iOS, the platform, and they were the ones actually pushing the narrative on privacy.
- [07:36]
What this did for the hyper casual and casual gaming industry was shift it in a way where the large players who were in this industry, like Google, became much more stricter about privacy. And new players like Applowin, who were not so strict and not exactly following the spirit of privacy, suddenly took this opportunity and became very large. And what that meant for developers who were working with Google, which was a very, very large part of their revenue, had to suddenly adapt to now work with applovin, which is today probably the largest share of their revenue in gaming. And what that's done for the unit economics is that applovin has a different style of working as compared to Google. So it's completely shifted the way that game developers now look at acquiring users and monetizing users, where now they're focusing much more on not just ads but but also in app purchases or subscriptions in their app to have users consistently paying them.
- [08:35]
A
Thank you. That's interesting for sure. And we saw A lot of shifts across the spectrum of industries, not to mention obviously game development during the pandemic. But what you mentioned here, these hyper casual casual games changed quite a bit as Apple iOS is requiring this big push on privacy, which really changed the game over at Google and it affected monetization. So I appreciate your insights on that app and Ashish. Last question of the day. Looking ahead, what will define the next generation of successful mobile app and game developers? And how will no code monetization platforms like Approta support that new wave of creators?
- [09:17]
B
Yeah, that's a really exciting question, Brian. And I think we're already seeing early signs of the next gen of mobile app and game developers. I think the simple answer is that AI will make everyone a potential creator of apps and games, whether it's an AI companion, whether it's an AI friend, whether it's a game that you are playing with your friends but want to convert it into a digital asset that you can distribute worldwide. I feel and what we see is that a lot of the new creators are very young people who are popular on social media, Reddit, Discord or these kind of communities where they already have distribution through their own individual influencer Persona and they are able to now vibe code or use AI to create the content and the apps and just put it out there on their existing distribution channel, which could be Roblox, social media, et cetera. And these young folks are coming up with completely new genres of digital assets that we haven't seen in the last decade.
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A
Right.
- [10:22]
B
So we should expect a whole wave of content that we haven't seen coming from these young folks who are building without any technical skills and building with a very different culture of having grown up. Right. The way that we feel abroada can help is our no code philosophy I feel is perfectly suited for these creators because when you're a non technical person building your product using AI with no code, you expect all the solutions and your journey after that to be similar to what you started, which is a no code journey. And given our philosophy has always been to be a no code partner for app and game developers, we're really excited to support and work with these young creators to continue and help them grow their revenue through monetization.
- [11:10]
A
That's amazing and I'm glad that you're looking ahead, you've got that vision to look and see what's happening right now. Obviously there's early signs of this next generation of app developers no code using Vibe coding, which is becoming part of the popular. These new creators, whether it's, as you mentioned, using AI as a companion or friend app, or creating digital assets that they may be able to share or sell. But this is really exciting and I'm glad that you're supporting creators like this. Ashish, it was such a pleasure having you on today and I look forward to speaking with you real soon.
- [11:42]
B
Thank you. Brian, thanks so much for the great questions and your time. Thanks for hosting me.
- [11:46]
A
Bye for now.
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It.