Mumbai: Zapak Digital Entertainment plans to launch its casual gaming business in Russia through a joint venture route and is scouting for a potential partner.

In addition, around half a million dollars will be invested to acquire content from East Europe including Russia. Games for the portal will be out sourced from Russian Developers and at the same time Zapak will look at tie-ups with local Russian Game Developing Studios to create games.

Zapak Digital Entertainment chief operating officer Rohit Sharma said, "After creating an internet gaming success story in the Indian market with Zapak.com, Zapak’s strategy is to focus on BRIC nations to create its global footprint. The reasons for the choice of BRIC nations are similarities in consumer behavior and digital trends i.e. PC and internet penetration. Consequently, Russia is an important nation for us. While the market here has leapfrogged in terms of gaming with the MMOG penetration we believe that with our domain knowledge and expertise of a JV partner we can develop a successful casual gaming business in this market.   

"Currently most of our content for Zapak.com is outsourced of which over 10% is sourced from Easter Europe and Russian Markets. We firmly believe that this region is a rich source of talented game developers. Some of the most successful casual games have been coming from Eastern Europe and Russia. We are looking at forging stronger partnerships with developers to source more content from here." he added.   

Zapak took its first step in the global market with the launch of’Zapakworld.com’, World’s largest destination for casual games in the world with over 12,000 games to offer. Zapak now plans launching casual gaming website is Russia, China and Brazil.

The Russian online gaming market was valued at $ 80 million with an annual growth rate of close to 100 per cent in 2007. The casual gaming market in Russia grew by over 500 per cent in 2007.Casual gaming market in Russia is expected to exceed US$ 30 million in 2008.