Philippines’ first esports ‘super app’ Kalaro offers monetization for organizers, streamers
By Aubrey Rose A. Inosante, Reporter
SINGAPORE-BASED software company Kalaro Holdings Pte Ltd. has launched its super app that hosts esports tournaments while offering monetization opportunities for organizers and content creators.
“Its purpose is to bring monetization to esports stakeholders, like casters, streamers, podcasters, and other content creators. You can send Kalaro gems to your favorite content creators,” Kalaro Founder and Chief Executive Officer Basilio “Jun” D. Lasco, Jr. said via a virtual press briefing on Thursday.
Kalaro version 2.1, launched on Thursday, allows organizers to host small, nationwide, and international esports games. It has started its mobilization for the accreditation of tournament organizers across 82 provinces in the country.
“Our trial tournament and collaboration with the province of Bulacan, the leader was not able to formally finish college, but his execution of tournaments and events are great, even participation of the local brands, and because of that, he was able to monetize,” he said.
Among the supported esports games in Kalaro are Mobile Legends (ML), ML Bang Bang, Call of Duty, Valorant, League of Legends, and more.
“Brands are not limited to advertising and promoting their products inside the platform even if they are not gaming products. But the [brand] storefronts where [in-app currency]’Kalaro Gems’ can be used to buy gaming gadgets and merchandise,” he said.
Gaming merchandise will soon be available for purchase inside Kalaro after the various brands and products have been onboarded to the platform.
Kalaro’s e-wallet can be loaded via GCash, Grabpay, and Alipay, and through online banking transactions, which can be done in 7-Eleven stores. It also partnered with Union Bank of the Philippines to manage e-wallet transactions to deter risk of fraud and cheating.
This can improve the gaming mastery and volume of the current 43 million Filipino gamers from 32 million before the pandemic, he said.
Mr. Lasco said he saw that the market has no available esports platform that catered to Filipinos and ASEAN countries, and mostly to communities in Western countries.
“Kalaro is able to automate the progression from player registration, team formation, or the bracketing, eliminations, semifinals, all the way to the championship round,” he said.
It created a social network hub for gamers so that finding a teammate, a new gamer-friend, a coach, or a competitor for a friendly match, he said.
Open beta testing of Kalaro began in October 2021, which led to gathering feedback from more than 10,000 open beta testers, with more than 60% of them coming from the Philippines.
“Artificial intelligence will continue to be a big factor in accelerating the implementation of Kalaro’s algorithm that matches a user with other fellow gamers,” the company said.
It added that gamer matching is now part of the app’s news feed, but will soon be in a separate module to better the discovery of new gamer-friends inside the platform.
The investment for Kalaro is “more than $1 million and less than $2 million initially” and would spend more to promote the application in the country.