Ganapati adds Japanese culture to the online casino market

Wednesday 30th of May 2018

Ganapati entered the international online casino market in April after more than a year of preparation, aiming to bring an unique Japanese look appealing to gamblers and gamers alike.

In an exclusive interview with Asia Gaming Brief, Taku Sawada, the CEO of Ganapati Malta, and Nadia Adelstein, the marketing manager of Ganapati Malta, laid out the company’s basic characteristics.

“We felt that Japanese culture, including anime, if introduced to foreign markets, could be sold,” explained Sawada.

The overall Ganapati enterprise was founded in 2013 and spent its first few years focused on mobile apps for the domestic Japanese market—it was a tech company unrelated to gambling.

In December 2016, however, the online gaming division was established in Malta, and the following year was spent setting up offices in places such as London and Estonia, with each country intended to add strength to the company by contributing within their own areas of specialization. London, for example, is where the marketing operation is based, while Estonia is where the main software developers work.

Ganapati appears to want to make their mark by producing high quality niche products, not with vast quantity. Sawada states that they are aiming to attract not only the gamblers: “We want to create games that even serious gamers will want to play.”

Adelstein, the marketing manager, highlights the uniqueness of the products on offer: “Because we have such an advantage of us making these Japanese games, we are so different from anyone else in the market… There’s no other real authentic Japanese-looking games.”

Ganapati sells its software to other businesses, which provide the platforms upon which gamers can actually access the games.

One country where Ganapati’s games are not yet available is its home country of Japan, where such online casinos remain illegal. However, they do hope that if the legal framework changes in the future, they will be well-positioned in Japan as well.

Ganapati is also eyeing the provision of gaming software to Japanese IRs, once they are established in the next decade.