Hungama.com, India’s premier and perhaps the best gaming site for the Indian surfers boasts of at least a few lakh subscribers and has seen the ups and downs of more than 300 clients as their customer with Coca-Cola being the stellar. It is managed by Virtual Marketing Pvt. Ltd, Bombay. In January 2000, they acquired a major Bollywood portal, Indiafm.com, and with it started epromotions of movies and music of Bollywood films on the website. This website is only for the Indian citizens (for the prizes atleast).
Start
During the early 90s when internet had already influenced the US and other developed countries, Indian dot com market was still virgin. Towards the second half of 90s suddenly a lot of dot coms came up. I was also working on one but gave up due to lack of finances. Gaming sites were a major revenue earner in the US. It was very obvious that someone had to come up with an Indian version very soon. Hungama.com, probably inspired by iwin.com, was introduced sometime during the late 90s by the CEO Neeraj Roy ( don’t know when - I started using it in the 1999). The layout of this website is quite impressive and uses Flash Player extensively. If you need more details on the layouts, why not check out https://hungama.com?
One fine day, in the humdrum environment of our office came a parcel for a colleague and what was inside it - a hep rucksag (of some hi-fi brand - don’t remember but Levi’s I suppose). Our curiosity was quenched when he briefly explained the nitty-gritties in a braggart tone. All he had done was answered a question on the website called Hungama.com. His answer was right and his stars were shinning on him, so he got the prize! Before he had finished, Hungama.com was already flashing on some of the screens in that dull office environment.
Addiction & Greed
So where’s the fun? You answer some questions and you get it right or wrong. Is that what this site is all about? Oh no! The fun lies in the fact that for every question that you answer, you accumulate points. So more questions you answer, the more points you get. If you get the answer right and if u r lucky ( Remember many people will get the answer right) you will receive a prize. Don’t worry if you don’t get any questions right. All the points can be redemeed for some gifts.
So now you are wondering if you need to be intelligent enough to know the answers. No! You have 3 choices (less difficult than KBC which has 4 options). Do Inky-pinky ponky, you are bound to get at least one of those hundred questions right by luck. If you consider yourself very unlucky, use Google.com. I used to take help of search engines extensively to get the right answer. More than anything else, I was accumulating points.
Very soon, I was getting couriers (they send prizes in select cities only by courier) every week. By trade of points and sometimes for getting lucky with the questions, I was getting cassettes, deodrants, after-shave, wallet, ice-cream coupons, watches, mousepad, T-shirt, cap and even condoms(hey I didn’t exchange points for that, I won it in a KamaSutra Promo contest). The best part was the movie tickets for special shows ( in Rex Theatre on Saturday/Sunday morning in B’lore). Some of my colleagues were also enjoying the wonders of this great website. I was addicted to it. Believe me, it was more addictive than MouthShut.com (that’s another story why I am here now and not on Hungama.com).
What went wrong?
Well, the weekly couriers became daily couriers. Ruksun Technologies, Pune ( in Koregaon Park) was then handling the software for Hungama.com. I had applied for a job here but could not make it due to some internal politics. Little did I know that soon I was gonna get a chance to take revenge. There was a flaw in one of the games on Hungama.com due to which I was able to make a million points within a day (infact I could have made billions of points every day) which was worth gifts worth 10, 000 rupees. The devil in me was smiling for challenging the software developed by Ruksun Technologies but then the angel in me implored to my conscious to stop this fallacious activity. Therefore I complained to the CEO, Neeraj Roy and the customer relationships executive, Reetu Matharu about this flaw but didn’t receive any response.
I shared about my success on Hungama.com with the other enthusiastic members in my office and soon everyone was gaining points and receiving prizes very frequently. It then caught the attention of Hungama.com and all the points gained via the flaw method were cancelled. I protested since I had already informed them and they had not objected to it. Some bitter exchange of mails took place. Ultimately, they cancelled all those points but in reward gifted me a Hungama.com watch(with no battery). Hmmh! They corrected the flaw. Still there was another flaw in the same game. I reported this. They got back with a job offer and I had to refuse it profusely since I was already working for a big MNC. They had changed the terms and conditions after this incident.
Since that time a lot things started going wrong. Sometimes their questions would never change. Most of the times their point system was not working properly. All the times their courier were delayed ( required a couple of mails to take action ).
Downfall
When business is good, it pays to advertise. When business is bad, you got to advertise - but warn you - never on the net. The main source of revenue for the dot coms were the ads which were rarely clicked. The forefathers of e-business had failed to realize that ads could never be relied upon. Thus, the beginning of the 21st century saw the downfall of most of the websites. Hungama.com was strong and lucky enough to survive due to the e-promotions of products. Thanks to its vast list of clients Polo, Mastercard, Coke, etc. Let me just point out that several lakh subscriers does not signify unique subscriber. Many have 4 to 5 accounts.
Things got worse for me. Soon the gifts in the redemption section started decreasing in number. So one had less to choose from. I was forced to redeem my points for some ear rings (not for me!) since there was nothing interesting for myself. Pretty soon, there was nothing in the redemption center - no gifts. I was asking the same question ( as many of you are asking on this website now) - what do I do with these points? I just checked the Redemption center again for this review. I saw this message - ’’Hang on, guys! Give us time to replenish our stocks! Come back in a while’’.
The whole concept is great but only if sincerely implemented. Should I recommend it? For all those Bollywood fans, its quite interesting. For all the gamers, it can be fun but for all those as greedy as me there is very little out there. So the choice is yours. Customer interaction is better than the other similar Indian website called https://contests2win.com. The language used in this website is also very interesting.
In case you do feel that this website has improved considerably, please notify me.
I no longer visit Hungama.com.