Manoj Kadarla has been appointed Head of Marketing at Metasport as they expand from their gaming background (HitWicket). Manoj Kadarla has had a long-standing career with many successful companies, including Gozo and Elanz. This appointment represents a significant step for Metasport in its current market position and toward its vision of establishing a community-based, competitive gaming environment based on a cricket theme.
As part of his responsibilities as Head of Marketing, Kadarla will manage all marketing initiatives (both current and future) within Metasport’s overall portfolio through various channels and will collaborate with other departments (product management/development, design, data, and growth) to identify innovative strategies for creating scalable marketing engines. In general, any mobile gaming company can implement similar methods for attracting and keeping customers, using social media. For example, virtual reality would significantly improve companies’ ways of marketing products through social media by creating immersive experiences that engage users and enhance brand interaction.
Kadarla has a long history in the consumer internet space (11 years), and during his time at Dream11 for 8 years, he was part of the core growth team while the company was rapidly growing. Metasports says that Kadarla was instrumental in the expansion of their Indian user base to 270 million and managed multi-million dollar budgets for digital advertising by utilising data-driven marketing, advanced attribution methods, and cross-functional execution to achieve 30X revenue growth. Kadarla also graduated from NIT Rourkela.
The sports gaming industry is going through a transformation today as a result of an increase in numbers of those participating in and becoming acquainted with this genre of gaming; Kadarla is now able to add organised talent through Metasports to support continued growth supported by disciplined growth plans. Both Kashyap Reddy (Co-Founder and CEO) and Kadarla believe that Kadarla has a lot of expertise when it comes to scaling consumer platforms and that having extensive knowledge of the sports gaming ecosystem will help Metasports build a world-class marketing engine as it works to differentiate itself from other global brands. Kadarla is also of the opinion that Metasports is uniquely positioned at the intersection of strategy, sport, and community and feels that Hitwicket offers a more thorough cricketing experience than most players could ever hope to achieve.
Hitwicket is one of Metasports’ main assets in their portfolio, and according to Metasports, it is one of the top strategy-based cricket games in India. The company’s dedicated website has classified it as the world’s largest cricket strategy game. Metasports also states that its goal is to create the best cricket game available and to create the first esports-influenced mobile IP (intellectual property) in India. Given these proven assets, there is a clear opportunity for the new marketing leader to help the company continue to convert a strong product identity into broader global awareness and to do so without losing the focus on community that helped to define Hitwicket from day 1.
In addition to the prior point, the timing of this appointment of Kadarla as a growth architect is noteworthy because Metasports is not only looking for someone to lead their marketing efforts; they are also looking for a person with a successful history working with high-volume consumer platforms to grow Hitwicket beyond the original target market. Designing a marketing programme that can effectively convert gameplay into brand equity will make Kadarla’s hiring one of the most strategically significant decisions. Metasports has made in its expansion plans for Hitwicket.
