MAM
NODWIN Gaming ropes in Android as title partner for BGMS Season 3
Mumbai: NODWIN Gaming, a gaming and esports company has announced Android as the title partner for India’s premier esports event Battlegrounds Mobile India Series (BGMS) Season 3. Additionally, the tournament will be powered by men’s skincare brand, Garnier Men, marking the first time that Android and Garnier Men have partnered with an Indian esports tournament.
The high-voltage action of Android BGMS Season 3 is being broadcast on Star Sports for the third consecutive year as the nation’s best BGMI squads battle it out for glory. The entire tournament will be played on high performance Android devices.
Moreover, Crunchyroll, a destination for anime and manga, has also joined forces with Android BGMS Season 3 as the anime partner while energy drink brand Red Bull has been onboarded as the official energy drink partner of Android BGMS Season 3. By leveraging the prominence of the tournament, partners will aim to engage with its widespread audience, while also elevating the overall experience for players and fans alike.
Garnier, L’Oréal India – general manager, marketing Anshuman Wanchu said, “We are delighted to partner with the BGMI Masters Series 2024. It is an incredible opportunity for us as this collaboration allows us to connect with the dynamic and passionate gaming and youth community in a meaningful manner. As a brand committed to innovation and excellence, we look forward to some incredible showcases in season 3 of BGMS. With this partnership, we aim to empower gamers to elevate not only their game, but also their skin care routine, and inspire them to achieve their best, both in the arena as well as in their daily lives.”
The tournament has also continued its association with TVS Raider, the sporty commuter motorcycle from TVS Motor Company as the official mobility partner and Philips OneBlade, the male grooming product of Philips India as the competition’s official styling partner.
Commenting on the partnership, SVP (marketing) – commuters, media and corporate brand Aniruddha Haldar commented, “We at TVS Motor company had Collaborated previously with Nodwin Gaming to help us develop a close connect with the Gaming audience – we are pleased to share that this collaboration has helped us to gain brand love, better connect to the gaming audience during and post the previous season. We are back again to announce yet another collaboration with Nodwin Gaming for the BGMI Master Series 3, this is in view to further strengthen our connect and engagement with the gaming audience.”
“We are thrilled to announce our partnership with Android, Garnier Men and Redbull for the highly anticipated third season of BGMS. Having such notable partners whose vision for the growth and development of competitive gaming in India mirrors our own, is a tremendous asset. Their involvement not just highlights the emergence of esports as a mainstream sport but also the massive potential of youth engagement in this field. Together, we are confident in our ability to provide the necessary resources and visibility required to nurture and promote esports talent nationwide,” stated NODWIN Gaming co-founder and MD Akshat Rathee.
The opening weekend of Android BGMS Season 3 was a resounding success, recording peak concurrent viewership exceeding 140,000 on digital platforms. The tournament commenced with a three-day Opener Week, where all 24 teams—20 invited and four qualified— were in action at the Android Arena in Chhatarpur, New Delhi.
The top 18 teams led by table toppers team 8Bit, and consistent performers OneBlade, IQOO Soul and Team X Spark progressed to the League Week. They were joined by team Z and Godlike Esports who were selected through audience voting from the bottom six. Meanwhile, Team Limra, Gujarat Tigers, Viking Esports and FS Esports were eliminated from the competition.
During the league week from 22 July to 4 August, the 20 teams will compete in the survival week and domination keague stages. The top four teams will secure direct qualification for the finals, while the remaining 16 teams will participate in the playoffs scheduled for 6 and 7 August. In the grand finale from 9 to 11 August, the top 12 teams from the playoffs, along with the four best teams from the league week, will compete to fight for the BGMS Season 3 title.
Adding a touch of innovation, this season also includes three exciting formats –
1. Powerplay (active throughout the tournament) – Squads will earn double points for each finish they achieve in the first circle of every match.
2. Bounty (active during the league weeks – survival week and domination week) – The top four squads from the overall standings of league week one, followed by the top four in each subsequent match will carry a bounty. Teams can earn bonus points only by eliminating an entire squad with bounty on them, with 10 points per squad.
3. Impact player (active during the weekend matches of the league stage: 27-28 July and 3-4 August) – The in-game leader (IGL) of each squad will conduct a random draw to designate an Impact Player who will earn double points for each finish they achieve. Teams will earn four points for every finish by the Impact Player during Powerplay.
“Going beyond traditional tournament formats, our new concepts are designed not only to heighten the intensity of the tournament for players and viewers but also to set a new standard for esports in India. These innovations aim to push the boundaries of competitive gameplay, and I am incredibly excited to see this new format unfold. Similar to traditional sports tournaments, Android BGMS Season 3 will produce memorable, nail-biting moments and games decided by the smallest of margins. We will witness players rise to the occasion, carrying their teams to victory,” added Akshat Rathee.
The teams who will be advancing to the League Week of Android BGMS Season 3 are as follows: Team 8Bit, OneBlade, IQOO Soul, Team X Spark, REVENANT, Entity, Gods Reign, Team Forever, Reckoning Esports, Carnival Gaming, Raven Esports, WSB GAMING, VASISTA ESPORTS, TEAM ORANGUTAN, Global Esports, MOGO eSports, Team Tamilas, Carpediem, Team Z and Godlike Esports.
Fans can catch all the action of Android BGMS Season 3 on Star Sports 2 (HD & SD) in English and Star Sports First in Hindi from Monday to Saturday from 7:00 pm. On league week Sundays, playoffs and finals, the broadcast will be from 6:30 pm. Fans will also have the option to switch to Tamil & Hindi commentary on SS2 using the blue button.
The tournament will also be streaming on the YouTube channels of Star Sports and NODWIN Gaming.
Digital
GUEST COLUMN: How AI is restructuring distributor and retailer motivation models
From incentives to intelligence, AI is redefining how brands engage channel partners
MUMBAI: Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how brands engage with their most critical yet often overlooked stakeholders: distributors, retailers, and last-mile influencers. For Abhinav Jain, co-founder and CEO of Almonds Ai, this shift marks a fundamental departure from traditional, transaction-led incentive models toward behaviour-driven, data-intelligent ecosystems. In this piece, Jain examines how AI is enabling brands to decode partner motivations, predict engagement patterns, and deliver personalised, scalable experiences—ultimately redefining channel relationships from transactional exchanges to long-term growth partnerships.
Across many sectors, there is increasing recognition that motivating those who bring products to market (distributors, retailers, last-mile influencers) poses a growing challenge.
Brands continue to invest significant marketing and digital resources to consumers, yet in many countries and the vast majority of emerging economies, these types of consumer-focused investment areas have had little impact on ultimate product delivery. Rather, it is still the case that traditional retail continues to make up most products sold.
So why is it that the systems built around motivating these channels have yet to evolve?
For decades, distributor and retailer engagement revolved around static schemes – quarterly targets, volume-based rewards, and occasional trade promotions. These programs were designed around transactions, not behaviour. The assumption was simple: if incentives increase, performance will follow.
Now, with the advent of artificial intelligence, the definition of performance is being challenged.
With the development of artificial intelligence, businesses can move beyond simply creating loyalty based on transactional-based models and toward models built on behaviours, the behaviours of channel partners that are intrinsic to their motivations in engaging with particular brands. As a result, the means by which businesses develop relationships within their distribution network are starting to evolve; thus, ultimately changing how brands interact with those within their distribution network.
Assessing engagement: Transitioning from transactional- to behavioural intelligence
Traditional loyalty systems refer to transactional activity (sales data). Although this data is valuable and important, it only provides a partial view of engagement across the channel partner.
For example, a retailer may have a high frequency of sales of a product, but their lack of engagement with the manufacturer would not reflect that they have true loyalty toward that brand. Conversely, a retailer who actively participates in training programmes, acts as brand advocates, and is engaged in learning with the supplier would exhibit more profound levels of loyalty but would have been invisible based on historical incentive programmes.
Artificial intelligence allows for the identification of behaviours that help to address this gap. Brands are able to use a variety of engagement data points, participate in learning programs, respond to communications, redeem behaviour and track platform use behaviour in order to identify motivation through behaviour.
McKinsey has stated that companies that leverage advanced analytics for their sales and distribution functions can achieve as much as a 15-20 per cent increase in productivity due to increased awareness of their behavioural trends throughout their networks.
This visibility of behavioural patterns within channel ecosystems can be transformational to brands as they can now view how partners engage on their path to purchasing products, instead of just measuring the sales revenue generated by those purchases.
Predicting motivations, not just measuring performance
Possibly, the largest contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to helping brands engage with partners via channel ecosystems is its ability to predict future engagement versus simply measuring past performance.
Traditionally, brands only realised that a partner was disengaged (not likely to purchase products) once their sales performance had already declined. By then, the brand would have to use significant amounts of incentives or aggressive promotional activities to recovery their partner’s engagement level.
AI models can help organisations to detect early signs that a partner is becoming disengaged, such as declining participation in learning modules, declining interaction via the platform, or slower reward redemption rates. These indicators can help organisations to proactively engage with their partners before their sales performance begins to decline.
The practical application of AI and predictive analytics gives brands the ability to re-engage with their partners prior to their sales performance declines. For example, instead of developing and implementing broad-reaching incentive programs that provide a “one size fits all” incentive to all partners in an ecosystem, brands are able to develop targeted, engaging re-engagement programmes. This is how personalisation can be done on a large scale, such as across global distribution and retail networks.
The vast majority of distributor and retailer channels have thousands, if not millions, of individual channel partners. Historically, providing personalisation to such a large number of businesses has not been feasible.
However, with the advent of AI, personalisation at scale is becoming a reality.
Brands can now create tailored engagement journeys for all their partners, based on their partner profiles, through some combination of machine learning models and behavioural segmentation. For example, high-performing distributors might receive higher levels of leadership-based recognition and greater incentives to continue to grow. Emerging retailers, on the other hand, might be supported with training, onboarding rewards, and measurable performance milestones.
The shift towards personalisation of partner engagement echoes the direction that consumer marketing is already moving towards.
According to Salesforce’s report, over 70 per cent of customers expect personalisation in the way that brands engage with them. As such, there is a growing expectation for B2B ecosystems to have these same types of expectations from their channel partners.
Gamification and continuous engagement
AI is also radically changing how brands will engage with their channel partners through the use of gamification.
Many traditional incentive-based contests and leaderboards would spark temporary engagement among their participants, but they struggled to sustain engagement over time. With the use of AI, gamification mechanics are evolving dynamically based on historical and evolving participation patterns by their channel partners.
Challenges, rewards, and recognition structures can be modified continuously in order to sustain engagement with all of a brand’s partner segments. This will provide a greater opportunity to move away from episodic campaigns towards ongoing, continuous engagement experiences.
When channel partners receive motivation as part of their daily business activities through recognition, learning, and tracking their performance, long-term loyalty will be achieved.
Aligning motivation to broader impact
There is a growing trend within the channel ecosystem to integrate sustainability and socially responsible behaviours into the channel partner programmes of brands.
Increasingly, brands are motivating their partners to use sustainable practices in their operations, participate in sustainable practices like sustainability-related knowledge programmes, or promote products that are in line with their sustainability objectives.
Brands can use AI to monitor and measure these types of behaviours and incorporate them into their incentive frameworks so that brands can align their commercial objectives with broader social and environmental outcomes.
A shift in the way brands view their channel partners
AI is having the most significant impact on the way that brands are now viewing their channel partners, as it relates to the underlying philosophy of those fundamental relationships.
For the past several decades, many brands have viewed their channel partners as intermediaries in the supply chain. More and more brands are now beginning to view their channel partners as key ‘partners-in-growth,’ and their actions can have a direct impact on market performance.
In fact, all the channel ecosystems are using behavioural engagement platforms to design new models that reward not just transactional behaviour, but also create continuous engagement journeys for their partners, where their partners can receive recognition for their participation, learning, and continued engagement, thereby reinforcing long-term loyalty to the brand.
The future: Intelligent channel ecosystems
As we consider what the next phase of channel engagement may look like, many believe that it will be based on intelligent ecosystems, using AI to continuously monitor and adjust the engagement strategies used to engage their channel partners, in real time and based on the behaviours of those partners.
For brands operating in complex distribution networks, the ability to perform well will be determined both by whether products are available to their customers, as well as by the enthusiasm, expertise, and loyalty shown from each channel partner that represents the brand each and every day that they are working on behalf of the brand.
While AI clearly does not eliminate the human aspect of a brand’s relationship with its channel partners, it does allow brands to better understand and nurture that relationship.
In markets where the last mile will determine whether a sale is made, how one leverages the intelligence gained by using AI will ultimately be the difference between gaining a new, sustainable competitive advantage versus losing one.
