SayGames’ Kate Dekalenkova on Vietnam’s Rapid Rise and the Shift Toward Hybrid Casual

We are here at Think Apps by Google App Summit and we are here with Kate Dalanova from SAI games, head of international partnerships focusing on Vietnam and we have lots of stuff to do. Why are you here Kate?
First of all, we are here to share the knowledge. Um big thanks to Google who invited us to share the knowledge with Vietnamese developer community. This is the most immediate goal and obviously uh we would like to get acquainted with the ecosystem and potentially to partner with uh top developers from a region.
Actually earlier we we were chatting with you about the focus for you was Vietnamese studios like how is it going with uh you know the ecosystem has been booming and booming and you are like a big part in the company for Vietnamese mobile game studios. How do you see the ecosystem here like both from partnership perspective and also high level ecosystem side?

So the market is clearly maturing very quickly. There are a lot of new players and uh it's pretty clear uh right now that the developers will gain an expertise right now. They are more focusing on games which are more uh based on ads but we believe that hybridization is inevitable uh here as well. and uh we would like to get them acquainted with our offer with our with everything how we work with developers. We had like um already pretty big success in Korea and we think that Vietnamese studios we can totally repeat this success if we uh come if we communicate with them and uh answer our questions if we keep in touch. This is the the key I believe for uh success in every region. That's well said actually and you know like uh even since the last year we always reading Vietnamese seen as like emerging market that's I think it's the time already is now like right it's already big and maybe you could tell us about both challenges and uh

opportunities to work with Vietnamese mobile game studios from publisher perspective.
Oh that's um a tricky one. So I mean our challenges are a bit specific to us because we don't have like a big pipeline and uh for us uh uh the challenge is always to choose to identify the right studios on which we would like to bet and to get acquainted with them whether the studios have the same uh focus on quality the same vision of long-term relationships with us. I believe that since um somewhat uh Vietnamese market is still a bit situated in the hyper casual side and they only they're starting to try different offers from different publishers. They are discovering for themselves what kind of different um uh opportunities uh instruments uh channels do we have? It will take time for them to actually understand what each of them needs specifically because there's no like single answer for everyone. And

this is why we want to be basically to put our offer on the shelf to understand to to let them know that we are about uh long-term focus about data about um app quality and hybrid casual casual and midcore games.
Yeah. uh pretty clear because uh we have kind of like hidden treasure if you can definitely crack the market with this hybridization from IIA to like ideal setup with uh getting best out of site too. Oh, that's clear. And you know there are also lots of Vietnamese mobile game studios that would be interested in uh talking to like you. What would you like to tell them because you probably don't have the energy to talk to thousands people in one day. So here Uh first of all, I would like to make a huge shout out to the Vietnamese developer community because that's amazing that they are so eager to learn that they are evolving so fast. I've never seen like any market evolving so quickly and the quality is rising.

There's so many people trying to do uh their product better. basically come to us, let's talk and uh if you'd like to have a partner who will provide you with solid instruments, solid analytics, best marketing and uh will respect u the relationships first and construct something long-term we have a right partner for you. So uh we'll be glad to welcome you at our SE games ecosystem.
Thank you so much. Uh thanks a lot for all the insights and of course Google for having us uh over the show. We can say bye together to the camera.
Bye.
Bye.