“Lottery is not only for fun, but is a way to socialize for the people of Africa,” Rahuldev Rajguru explained during his session at Casual Connect USA 2014. “The lottery industry supports billions of families and feeds them. Lottery is the bread and butter for many people who work for that in Africa.”
Rahuldev Rajguru, co-founder and CEO of LocusPlay, asserts, “Mobile everything, everywhere is the future – retail, travel, entertainment or even banking. If a business is not mobile-accessible, it will be as if they are invisible!”
A History With Mobile
Rajguru has been deeply involved with mobile technologies from their beginnings, when nobody knew anything about iPhones or Android devices. Initially, he began with mobile games, then became an architect and product manager of a large scale enterprise mobility product. After spending over a decade in the industry, he has witnessed how mobile technology has changed, experience that is a definite help for his company to bring ideas from the drawing board to reality, as they create state-of-the-art mobile technology platforms for lotteries.
Merging Old & New
The genesis of LocusPlay occurred after Rajguru was approached by a Caribbean lottery to help them sell tickets on the streets so people would not have to line up to make their purchases at a lottery store. After learning about lottery operations, he realized he could help by integrating mobile technologies into lottery platforms to assist them to realize their potential. But there was a major problem – smartphones didn’t exist, only bulky PDAs that quickly ran out of battery.
Rajguru focused on applying the PDA technology and connected the lottery with either a portable cable or Bluetooth. In only two weeks, he had a prototype ready to test, and from there made a full swing product that not only provided a new way of selling lottery tickets digitally, but also prevented fraud.
After this entry into the lottery world, he did some research and discovered the lottery business brings in about $300 billion globally, with 90 percent of countries participating. But the emerging markets in Latin America, Asia and Africa, with business worth about $100 billion, were all manual, paper-based operations. They used no technology at all, and he discovered this was because the only technology available to them was expensive and unsuitable.
These emerging markets lack the infrastructure that can support the sophisticated technology used in markets in the US or Europe. They do not have uninterrupted power, high speed networks, and broadband connectivity. The gap between supply and demand of suitable technology for these markets was obvious. LocusPlay was his answer: an inexpensive technology that runs on mobile and cloud platforms, a perfect fit for emerging markets. LocusPlay exists to allow paper lotteries to go digital.
Finding Profitability
A particularly exciting turning point for Rajguru came when one of their customers, a lottery running at a constant loss, became profitable after turning to LocusPlay. In fact, their revenue grew eight fold in the first year after adopting LocusPlay, while selling millions of tickets. Rajguru says, “We were always confident in LocusPlay, but this exceptional performance really bolstered our confidence and laid a strong foundation for our customers and us.”
He notes that in this era of smartphones and tablets, the only industry that needs to catch up is the lottery. But paper lotteries still dominate over 80 percent of the world market, so there is a huge role for mobile technologies.
Finding Opportunities
In the underdeveloped countries of Africa and Latin America, everything is mobile; people have almost skipped the PC era, and, in fact, are more at ease with mobile transactions than people in developed countries, in his opinion. But somehow, lotteries have not followed the trend, with close to zero penetration in emerging markets.
He claims, “These markets are a great opportunity, since they grow very fast. The technology is here now; I think that in possibly three years, emerging markets will sell over half their tickets via mobile devices.”
Playing with the Family
Rajguru spends his free time gaming and admits he was a big fan until a few years ago, starting with the Atari console during his school days and continuing up to his Wii. But now his business keeps him so busy that he can no longer keep up with the console trends. He still plays on Wii when his daughter wants him to play with her, usually tennis or some other game to exercise and have fun.
He also plays a lot of F2P games on his smartphone and tablets, usually while he is traveling. The games he plays are those his daughter introduces him to. She has all the latest information about mobile games. He says, “Initially, I play with her and she makes sure I remain interested in them so she can have someone to play with.” One of his favorites is Temple Run 2. As he progresses through the game, he does buy content, which he feels allows the game to become more interesting. In his opinion, it is fair for F2P games to expect you to pay for premium content or show you an advertisement while giving you full access to the game.
Rajguru also enjoys traveling and exploring new and unknown places worldwide, as well as meeting new people and understanding their lifestyles and cultures. Traveling for business gives him opportunities to explore new things, especially in smaller countries in Africa and Latin America. And he makes sure to carve time out of his busy schedule to devote time to his hobbies of reading, philately, and coin collecting.
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