Hala Yalla executives share their experience of building a popular Kafu Games platform during the DGC games industry conference
Riyadh, KSA 5 January 2021: Senior executives from Hala Yalla – Saudi Arabia’s first Super App for tourism, sport and entertainment – shared their experience of building an eco-system for eSports and gaming in the Kingdom during the virtual DGC games industry conference.
The event was hosted and broadcast from NEOM City in Saudi Arabia and brought together businesses and experts from around the world in live sessions and meetings. The team from Hala Yalla took part in a presentation of Hala Yalla’s journey from idea to reality while highlighting how the Kafu Games app is involved in eSports and gaming. Farrukh Bandey, co-founder of Hala Yalla also took part in a panel discussion on launching mobile apps and startups.
“We were delighted to welcome representatives from Hala Yalla and Kafu Games during the conference. Although the gaming sector is still relatively new in the region, Kafu Games is leading the way by helping to support this growing community in Saudi Arabia. Those participating in the conference gained valuable knowledge from the sessions that Hala Yalla and Kafu Games took part in and hopefully it has encouraged a new generation of people to become part of the industry,” said Alia Fawad, General Manager, ITP Gaming.
“Attending DGC was a wonderful opportunity to share Hala Yalla’s experience from idea to reality and highlight how we have evolved the app and services to include eSports and gaming with Kafu Games. The virtual conference brought together businesses and experts from across the eSports and gaming industry and allowed us to interact, meet and gain insights from our peers within the sector. Gaming in Saudi Arabia has seen a rapid growth in popularity and Kafu Games is helping to foster this interest by organizing competitions and allowing gamers to connect with each other from around the world,” said Farrukh Bandey, co-founder of Hala Yalla.
Hala Yalla gives people living in Saudi Arabia the chance to discover new experiences, book tickets, organize events, join communities and more. This makes the Super App in alignment with the Vision 2030 goals of encouraging a healthier, more active lifestyle among residents in the Kingdom.
Kafu Games is an elite Saudi gaming hub that hosts eSport tournaments for the biggest game titles such as FIFA 20, Fortnite PUBG and more. It is a product of Hala Yalla and its wide range of features such as match schedules, score submission, personalized avatars and more have proved popular with gamers. As a result, it has quickly become the largest eSports platform in the region delivering the most immersive online gaming experience for eSports fans in the Kingdom and beyond.
It is now expanding its reach to the rest of the world by organizing special tournaments in the US, UK and Canada and as such is helping to extend the Kingdom’s presence in the industry worldwide. This has seen growing interest in the platform from countries outside the region, with hundreds of thousands of visits from the US and thousands of international gamers registering in Kafu Games tournaments.
The platform is continually evolving with new features to add to its tournament management technologies that appeal to this growing user base. Looking ahead to 2021, the Kafu Games team plan to further build upon and enhance their existing esports tournament offerings with operational improvements, more games as well as increasing the variety of tournament types available to organizers. In addition, it is reaching out to local small third-party game developers and offering them the opportunity to integrate their games onto the Kafu platform. Work is also currently underway to develop the software tools necessary to support small scale developers in creating and marketing their games.
In April, Kafu Games enjoyed its biggest online eSports season, which was launched with the support of the Saudi Federation of Electronic and Intellectual Sports (SAFEIS). The platform also hosted this year’s Gamers Without Borders event which attracted hundreds of thousands of website visits during the competition.
At present Kafu Games has more than 40,000 players, more than 7,800 teams and over 10,000,000 SAR in prizes awarded so far. It is a user-friendly system that enables a competition organizer to create and run tournaments.
The DGC Games industry conference KSA Edition was held from December 15 to 17.
