Game On! Rooter Achieves Massive Esports Growth

Building the biggest online gaming platform

When it comes to esports, players and fans expect an uninterrupted, high-resolution streaming experience backed by the highest levels of security. India’s leading esports platform, Rooter, needed a platform that would enable it to scale fast, deliver an outstanding streaming experience, and secure gamer content and data from external threats. Rooter had no hesitation in selecting Akamai to meet these expectations and help maintain its dominant position as the fastest-growing esports community in India.

Good news: Rooter achieved massive growth over the last year. Piyush Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO of Rooter spoke to Jonathan Singer, Senior Manager, Global Games Industry at Akamai about his platform and the role that Akamai played in helping Rooter leap to the top of the Indian esports rankings. 

A Q&A session with the CEO
 

Jonathan Singer: Piyush, can you tell us why you founded Rooter and how it evolved from the initial idea?

Piyush Kumar: Rooter started out as a community platform in India for traditional sports, including cricket, tennis, and hockey. But over time, and especially during the pandemic when so many sporting events were cancelled, we pivoted towards esports.

JS: Can you give us an example of how this market is evolving, and Rooter’s position in this sector?

PK: It’s been an incredible year. We’ve grown to become India’s biggest gaming and esports platform with more than 40 million members. Currently, we have a monthly active user base of 12 million and we are growing very rapidly. 

JS: What’s the big deal about India and esports?

PK: India is the home to some of the biggest stars on the esports circuit and is one of the fastest growing markets with more than 500 million players. This makes it the second largest gaming community in the world. We’re thrilled to support all these participants from the biggest superstars to the casual players. 

JS: How does the Rooter community use the platform?

PK: There are a number of ways you can participate. You can take part in tournaments, watch tournaments on a live stream, upload and share videos and images from your gaming platform, or simply chat and share messages with the rest of the community. Because participation is so versatile, it puts enormous demands on our systems, which is why we contacted Akamai in the first place. 

JS: How has Akamai helped you scale so fast?

PK: Akamai’s technology ensures a high-quality, high-availability experience for users of our platform. This is a fanatical community in which even a brief interruption to streaming quality will mark the platform down, as will latency issues or a security breach. Fans are not shy about sharing a bad experience, which could seriously damage a platform’s reputation. There is zero room for compromise in platform availability and streaming quality, which is where Akamai delivers. 

JS: Which Akamai solutions does Rooter use?

PK: We’re using content delivery network technology, including Adaptive Media Delivery to deliver high-quality online video. We also use Akamai to reduce network latencies and accelerate API calls to deliver dynamic content to our end users. 

JS: What about security and privacy?

PK: This is super important. We are determined to protect members and their personal data at all costs. We’ve deployed App and API Protector, which has already detected and prevented several potential threats. It also provides protection against distributed denial-of-service, DDoS, attacks, so these are no longer a risk to the Rooter platform.

We also make use of the Plus Service and Support package, especially for system deployment and support. Akamai is really the backbone of the Rooter business, and all our streaming services and traffic flows through your solutions. The fact that we get regular health checks and access to Akamai’s system experts gives us complete confidence now and in the future. 

JS: How about the future? What are Rooter’s aspirations for esports? 

PK: We have ambitious targets for the platform. This includes managing 30 million streams per month, while hosting and streaming thousands of tournaments a day. Our job is to help onboard millions of new members seamlessly with zero disruption to the day-to-day experience of existing players. We’ve also got our eye on the international market and are looking to expand beyond India. 

JS: Do you really think that esports – and Rooter – can continue its current steep trajectory?

PK: Absolutely! No question at all. I’m a big gaming fan myself, of course, and I can see why it is so attractive to an international audience. You’ve got a platform, like Rooter, which connects esports superstars with millions of fans. And we’re delivering it in a way that’s just as exciting as other sports. I compare it with Formula 1, which puts drivers in the fastest cars while giving spectators a view of the race from onboard cameras. Akamai’s technology ensures that we deliver an equally thrilling experience to our esports community. 

JS: That’s great news! We appreciate the opportunity to support Rooter today and in the future, and look forward to continuing this journey with you. Sure feels like a win-win! Thank you again, Piyush.

Learn more

With the help of Akamai, Rooter provides an uninterrupted experience for millions of online gamers playing titles like “Battlegrounds Mobile India,” “Counter-Strike,” and “Call of Duty.” If you want to learn more about Rooter’s success, you can read their customer story on our website.