AMA Recap — Rario
The session of AMA ( Ask Me Anything ) with Rario was conducted on 18 Aug 2022 at 8:30 PM IST (3 PM UTC) and lasted for 2 hours.
ADMIN ROUND
Ankit Wadhwa and Sunny Bhanot from Rario have joined us for this AMA session.
Jonty|Host
Please Introduce yourself ?
Ankit Wadhwa
Sure — I’m Ankit Wadhwa, co-founder, and CEO at Rario. We had also done an AMA a few months ago here. @augnin is my cofounder and CTO at Rario. This is our second venture together, the last being the 2nd largest e-commerce marketplace in the middle east (competed with Amazon in Dubai) where we also worked together. For the last year and a half, we have been building Rario as the world’s most exciting cricket fan club — powered by NFTs. Since we were here last, we have partnered with several leagues, cricketers, and cricket boards and have also raised our $120mn series A from Dream Capital and others to build an unmatched cricket NFT experience for our fans
Sunny Bhanot
@ankitwadhwa1 covered most of it. just an interesting piece of trivia. Ankit and I have known each other for over 22 years now, from the time we used to play cricket and write code together in college 🙂
Jonty|Host
Tell us what led to the founding of Rario. What attracted you to the NFT space?
Ankit Wadhwa
Cricket is a large sport — estimates say, there are 1–2.5bn fans and followers of the sport. This is second only to football.
For fans, primary engagement with the sport is on TV or OTT broadcasts. The advent of fantasy sports in cricket added a second screen to the experience. But in all cases, fans are spectators
Rario allows fans to now own a part of the sport. They get to take the hot seat, just like franchisee managers — buy scarce NFT player cards, build squads, and participate in contests and games with these squads and much more.
Rario is a team of massive cricket fans and the opportunity to offer this enhanced fan experience got us to build Rario.
Jonty|Host
What Makes Rario stand out amongst your peers/competitors?
Ankit Wadhwa
Rario is built by fans for fans. Owning Rario NFTs gives you access to the Rario Club where you can participate in games and apps with your NFT squads. But that’s not all, in the Rario Club you will also get access to Privileged experiences enabled by our partner ecosystem with 18+ cricketer brand ambassadors, 6+ leagues and 2 major cricket boards and many more to come. Also, Dream Sports’ joining Rario’s cap table through its Corporate Venture Capital arm Dream Capital has enabled us to take this differentiated offering to their 140mn+ cricket fan users.
To put it in context, this is 3–4x the population of many sports-loving nations!
This massive initial user base sets Rario apart from many NFT programs that are struggling to scale. It doesn’t get bigger than this!
Jonty|Host
How has the transition from the Polygon blockchain to your own private blockchain been? How does that benefit you expense-wise and operationally?
Sunny Bhanot
The decision to move to a private chain was driven by 2 main factors — scalability and of course, expenditure (gas fee) at that scale.
Rario’s private blockchain is built on top of the polygon edge framework. We’ve been working closely with the Polygon team on this.
Since Rario chain is EVM compatible, it was relatively easy for us to migrate from public to private chain.
Rario Chain is a Proof of Authority chain — which allows us to scale rapidly, with faster transaction settlements at a much higher throughput (TPS) — an absolute must for providing a good user experience at scale
Another significant advantage is that there is no gas fee, which at the scale we are aiming for would have been a very high number, even on the Polygon chain, where gas fees are a fraction of Ethereum.
Jonty|Host
Rario is going to launch a cricket strategy game. Tell us more about it.
Ankit Wadhwa
The game that we will be launching soon is a one-of-a-kind game. It can only be played using Rario Player Card NFTs which are unique NFTs of cricket players and can be acquired from our pack drops.
The game requires you to build a team of 3 players from your vault of player card NFTs in a match. Your team must comprise at least one player from each side and a minimum of one batter and one bowler.
In order to play and compete in any match, you must make a team and enter contests, which are of different levels. Entry to each contest is free with the only prerequisite being possession of Rario Player Card NFTs. But there are big Rewards for winners in the contests.
The Game launches on 28th August alongside Caribbean Premier League. Contests will continue thereafter alongside other cricket matches and leagues as well. There are rewards of up to Rs. 1 crore + up for grabs for those who play in CPL contests!
This is the beginning of the P2E era in Cricket.
In case you would like to know more you can visit https://d3.club/how-to-play.
Jonty|Host
Can you give us some pro tips about the game exclusively for the audience who is here today?
Sunny Bhanot
Ah, the cheat codes 😉
Ankit gave a quick overview of the game — a cricket-focused strategy game
and like with any strategy-based game, your odds of success are influenced by your skills — intricate knowledge of the sport, player form and abilities vs other teams, and the knack of unearthing “new” rockstars
and, equally important, how many “strategic” levers you have to play
More cards you have, of different players — batters, bowlers, wicket-keepers, all-rounders, different scarcity, different teams — give you the ability to form better strategies, and participate in more games. As you grab higher tier cards, more games and contests are unlocked, which have higher rewards. (up to INR 1cr as Ankit mentioned) Our early pack drops are designed to give additional benefits to our early community users — better players, higher scarcity. It will get harder to get them in the future. So, I’d recommend, getting in early and grab those packs.
TWITTER ROUND
I understand that “ Rario” is a platform that combines Metaverse: NFT, and P2E. Can you explain how you would incorporate these elements into your “ Rario “ game? What kind of experience will players get when playing on , How will they interact with each other?
Ankit Wadhwa
Rario player and moment cards are licensed NFTs authorized by respective IP owners. Through our partnerships, we now have NFTs of 1100+ cricketers globally. With these NFT cards, users get access to the Rario club where they can participate in various apps and games. Our initial set of games in the Rario Club is P2E, where you don’t have to pay to enter any contest, but your knowledge of cricket and effort in building a good squad/collection rewards you. We are working towards building IRL (in-real-life) utilities e.g. stadium experiences, live matches with other fans, etc which will be further benefits of owning Rario NFTs. As they say, ownership has benefits.
Players will interact with each other in multiple ways —
1. through games and apps, where they compete/interact with each other
2. on community platforms like discord (join: https://discord.gg/rario)
3. by buying and selling NFTs from one another on the Rario marketplace
Security is also an important thing, now there are a number of projects that are hacked and cheated after launch, leading to long-term maintenance, even closing? So does the project have any plans to protect the system safety of the game as well as the customers?
Sunny Bhanot
We are paranoid about the security of both — our platform and users, and our thought process has always been security-first. And recent incidents prove that our security-first approach is the right one.
As we go mainstream and get millions of cricket to join Rario, expecting people who can’t even remember their passwords to handle private keys is asking for trouble. Many users have lost their digital assets by accidentally revealing their private keys. And, therefore, we decided to go for custodial wallets to make them secure and user-friendly.
We thoroughly test our features before releasing them to the public. We also work with independent security agencies to identify and fix security issues.
Our smart contracts have been tested thoroughly and are certified secure by a leading security firm Of course, that makes us a little slow, but we are sure-footed about the security of our platform, and our customers.
Non-crypto user is very important for mainstream adoption. How you are planning to attract non-crypto users to your “#rariohq” project? Is there any upcoming partnership that will bring non-crypto users and real-usereal-use cases?
Sunny Bhanot
When we launched Rario last year, it was a different world. We supported both crypto as well as FIAT payments right from day 1 for our pack drops.
It was a revelation for us when we observed that a good chunk of our users preferred FIAT payments over crypto. Since then, a lot has changed, especially the regulatory scenario and taxation, which to be honest is very confusing even for experts.
So, we have disabled crypto payments on our platform. Rario only supports FIAT payments — credit cards, debit cards, UPI, Netbanking
We will enable crypto payments as and when we have a more conducive environment. It may disappoint a few users, and rightly so, but it’s important for us to provide a safe and secure environment for all our users.
I see you have 12 partners so far. How has this partnership benefited Your universe and what other partnerships are you looking forward to having? Will there be ambassadors to further promote the project?
Sunny Bhanot
Well, Rario has always positioned itself as an “officially licensed” cricket NFT platform. And therefore, partnerships are absolutely essential for us.
Rario has exclusive partnerships with Cricket Australia (including Big Bash League, Women’s Big Bash League), New Zealand Cricket (including Super Smash league), Hero Caribbean Premier League, Lanka Premier League, Abu Dhabi T10 League, and Legends League Cricket.
We also have a roster of over 900 international cricketers as well as over 30 exclusive brand ambassadors, with the recent ones being Cheteshwar Pujara (hasn’t he been in a great form lately) and Axar Patel (he was on fire today with Zimbabwe)
In the next few days, we will be revealing a lot more partnerships and brand ambassadors — some of them are really big names. We are really excited about partnering with them 😊
Our brand ambassadors (including Rishabh Pant, Faf duPlesis, Shakib alHasan) have been promoting Rario platform, and will continue to do so 🙂
Can you tell us about the main @rariohq targets you are currently focusing on and the market you are trying to reach?
Sunny Bhanot
Our vision is to build an engaging NFT gaming ecosystem for cricket fans across the globe. And as @ankitwadhwa1 mentioned earlier — there are an estimated 1–2.5 billion cricket fans. 🙂
Our immediate target segment is a sub-segment of cricket fans who love to play cricket-focused games to earn (including 140m Dream Sports users)
As evident from our partnerships, we are global (Cricket Australia, New Zealand Cricket) and still focused on our core market — India (Dream Sports)
so, yeah, we do have a grand vision! and we are very excited to be working towards our goals alongside our esteemed partners 🙂
COMMUNITY ROUND
Linh Nguyễn
Can you explain, which one is your top priority? Security, Product, Partnership, or Token price?
Sunny Bhanot
We have multiple top priorities 🙂
Partnerships — because we only do “officially licensed” NFTs.
Product — well, we are building a cool product in the end.
and as I mentioned earlier — Security — is an absolute must!
Shahin Dewan
IS This Your project only for elite investors, how about others with small funds, is it open to everyone?
Sunny Bhanot
We as a platform are for cricket fans, from all walks of life. It is open for everyone — no one group gets any preference 🙂 we do have a bias for cricket fans though 🙂
5 Geiger
What are plans for global expansion? Are you focusing on market at this time or focus on building and developing or getting customers and users, or partnerships?
Sunny Bhanot
I guess I’ve already answered this one — our market is global, as is clearly evident from our partnerships
Mark
How important is the community for the team and what steps will be taken by the team to keep the interest of the community & investors intact? Rario
Sunny Bhanot
Community is the core of our project. We active talk to our community, hear their views and feedback and try and incorporate as much as possible into our product roadmap
Captian | TradeCoin X1000 BTC
What is your top things for priorities in 2022? Could you share some plans for the upcoming year?
Sunny Bhanot
Our top priorities are — launching the game this month with Caribbean Premier League, and then focusing on the Cricket World 2022 to be held in Australia in October 🙂
The AMA recorded many great questions from the Crypto Players India community, as well as meticulous answers from our guests Sunny Bahnot and Ankit Wadhwa from Rario. AMA Concluded at 10:30 pm IST.
About us!
CryptoPlayers is one of the oldest & largest crypto communities in India since early 2017. We are a group of 29000+ telegram members and growing.
