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OneAD Gaming Super-App

Scaling India’s #1 Casual-Gaming & Ad-Tech Platform to 30 Million Downloads and 27 % Higher Ad CTR—All in 24
Weeks with Steady Rabbit’s Core-Flex Micro-GCC Model

Client
OneAD
Vision

Bring snackable gaming & instant rewards to every smartphone.

Initial Tech Stack

Unity Android build, Node.js monolith, MongoDB Atlas

OneAD

OneAD
Case Study

Executive Summary

OneAD set an ambitious target: become India’s all-in-one casual-gaming super-app—a single download offering dozens of lightweight games, social leaderboards, and a proprietary ad-stack that monetises without ruining the player experience. Its early Unity prototype proved sticky (24-minute average session), but the back-end melted beyond 50 000 DAU and the ad yield lagged market averages.

With cricket-season campaigns looming, OneAD had 24 weeks to:

  • Scale concurrency from 50 000 → 1 million DAU with 99.95 % uptime
  • Implement an ad-mediation engine that lifts click-through rates at least 20 %
  • Launch on both Android & iOS (90 % code reuse) and localise into five Indian languages
  • Pass Google Play and Apple App Store policy reviews on the first attempt

Steady Rabbit mobilised a Micro-GCC squad—Core team, Flex ad-tech specialists, Buffer insurance. In six two-week sprints we:

  • Re-architected the monolith into event-driven Go micro-services on AWS EKS, auto-scaling to 1.4 M peak DAU
  • Built a plug-and-play Ad-Mediation layer (AdMob, IronSource, Meta Audience Network) boosting ad CTR 27 % and eCPM 18 %
  • Shipped a React-Native super-app (93 % shared code), now at 30 M+ cumulative downloads with a 4.3★ rating
  • Introduced real-time leaderboards & tournament engine, driving daily session frequency +42 %
  • Achieved 99.98 % uptime, sub-250 ms p95 API latency, and zero P0 bugs in the first 90 days of production

The engagement finished two days ahead of schedule, unlocked ₹22 crore ($2.6 M) annual ad run-rate, and positioned OneAD for a Series-B raise at a 3× valuation multiple.

Client Profile & Business Context

  • Client
    OneAD

    India-first casual-gaming & ad-tech platform

  • Founded

    2017, Gurgaon

  • Funding (Pre-Engagement)

    Seed + Bridge, ₹15 crore total

  • Vision

    Bring snackable gaming & instant rewards to every smartphone.

  • Initial Tech Stack

    Unity Android build, Node.js monolith, MongoDB Atlas

  • KPIs Promised to Investors

    25 M downloads, ₹15 crore ARR, 20 % ad CTR uplift inside FY

The founders had deep ad-tech DNA but limited large-scale backend experience. They needed a partner capable of owning the roadmap—from cloud & infra to game-SDK integration—without burning investor runway.

Problem Statement / Key Challenges

Scalability Ceiling

  • Node monolith choked at 50 k concurrent players;
    p95 latency hit 2.7 s during peaks

Mediocre Monetisation

  • Hard-coded AdMob only; ad CTR 1.6 % vs. market 2.0–2.2%.

Fragmented Player Experience

  • Each mini-game a separate APK; updates forced multiple
    Play-Store pushes.

Regulatory & Policy Risk

  • Upcoming Google “high-risk monetisation” policy meant
    stricter crash & latency budgets.

Aggressive Go-Live Deadline

  • IPL cricket season ad campaigns in 24 weeks—missing
    window would erase ₹8 crore projected revenue.

Our Approach

Micro-GCC Squad Design

Layer
Roles
Focus
Core (6)
Squad Lead/PM, 2 React-Native engineers, Go micro-services dev, DevOps/SRE, QA Automation
End-to-end engineering & predictable cadence
Flex (2)
Ad-Tech Specialist (mediation, bidding), Game SDK Engineer (Unity bridges)
High-risk spikes: ad yield, Unity integration
Buffer (1)
Shadow Mobile Dev
PTO/attrition safety—funded by Steady Rabbit

Shift-Left Governance

  • Seven Plan-Left gates: Persona, Acceptance, Risk label, Arch sketch, Estimate, SteadCAST Capacity check, Test note.
  • SteadCAST dashboards raised amber/red alerts immediately; Risk-High WIP kept < 15 %.
  • Weekly 30-min steering with founders; burn+KPI review—zero surprises.

Discovery Sprint 0

  • Player Journey Mapping – cashouts, leaderboards, ad reward loops.
  • Architecture Blueprint – Go/gRPC services, Kafka event stream, Redis leaderboards, serverless tournament engine.
  • Non-Functional Targets – p95 API latency ≤ 250 ms, crash-free sessions ≥ 99.8 %, 99.95 % uptime.

Outcome: Backlog 112 SP/sprint capacity; launch target Week 24.

Solution Delivered

Cloud-Native Backend

  • AWS EKS with Karpenter auto-scaling nodes < 60 s.
  • Go + gRPC core services: Auth, Matchmaking, Wallet, Leaderboard, Notification.
  • Kafka for event streaming; Redis Streams for millisecond leaderboard writes
  • p95 API latency 2.7 s → 240 ms.

Super-App Front-End

  • React-Native container; mini-games loaded as remote bundles via CodePush—no Play-Store round-trip.
  • Shared code 93% across iOS/Android; five-language i18n via i18next.
  • Crash-free sessions 99.82% (meets Google threshold).

Ad-Mediation & Yield Optimisation

  • Adapter pattern plugs AdMob, IronSource, Meta Audience Network; waterfall + header-bidding hybrid.
  • Real-time eCPM optimiser using AWS Lambda; ad-unit updates via GraphQL mutation.
  • Results: Ad CTR 1.6 % → 2.03 % (+27 %); eCPM $1.05 → $1.24 (+18 %).

Tournament & Social Layer

  • Redis Lua scripts handle atomic leaderboard updates in 8 ms.
  • Daily tournaments auto-generate via cron; winners paid via in-app wallet using UPI rails.
  • Session frequency +42% and retention D30 +11 pp.

Observability & Compliance

  • OpenTelemetry traces → Grafana & Loki; SLO dashboards (latency, error budgets).
  • AWS WAF, Shield Advanced; Play-Store policy crash cluster < 0.1 %.
  • ISO 27001 evidence auto-archived—future-proofing.

Execution Journey

Sprint
Key Deliverables
KPI Shift
Predictability
Sprints 0
Discovery, backlog, threat model
Baseline latency 2.7 s
100 % gate pass
Sprints 1
EKS + Karpenter, Auth service
Latency 2.7 s → 1.6 s
Risk-High WIP 14 %
Sprints 2
Kafka ingest, React-Native shell
Crash-free 97.6 % → 99.1 %
Buffer unused
Sprints 3
Ad-mediation PoC, Redis leaderboard
CTR 1.6 % → 1.9 %
Flex Ad-Tech 24 h
Sprints 4
CodePush remote bundles, i18n
Downloads 5 M → 9 M
No slip
Sprints 5
Tournament engine, UPI payouts
Session freq +30 %
Hot-fix 0
Sprints 6
eCPM optimiser, iOS launch
CTR 1.9 % → 2.03 %
Budget +5 %
Sprints 7
Load test 1.4 M DAU, WAF tuning
p95 lat 240 ms
--
Sprints 8
App-Store & Play-Store reviews
Crash-free 99.82 %
--
Sprints 9
Cricket-season go-live, ad campaigns
DAU 1.4 M
Delivered 2 days early

Buffer dev filled in when React-Native engineer was hospitalised in Sprint 5—velocity dip 0 SP

Business Outcomes & Impact

30 M downloads in nine months; 4.3★ rating maintains organic store ranks

Ad CTR 1.6 % → 2.03% (+27 %); eCPM +18% → annual ad run-rate ₹22 crore

p95 API latency 2.7 s → 240 ms (11.3× faster); 99.98 % uptime

Session frequency +42 %, D30 retention +11 pp

Backend cost / DAU –23 % via Karpenter spot nodes & autoscale

Crash-free sessions 99.82 % → Play-Store “high-quality” badge

Secured Series-B term-sheet at 3× valuation; signed exclusive IPL ad-deal with Telco partner

Predictability premium (~7 % rate uplift) paid back in a single IPL campaign that would have been missed with a two-sprint slip.

Why Steady Rabbit?

Core-Flex Micro-GCC

Instant access to Ad-Tech & Unity SMEs; Buffer bench erased PTO risk.

SteadCAST Predictability

Real-time capacity & risk analytics delivered 98 % sprint adherence.

Shift-Left Governance

Seven Plan-Left gates slashed re-work 39 % with < 2 h overhead per sprint.

Gaming & Ad-Tech Expertise

Deep knowledge of mediation, yield optimisation, and Unity bridges.

Outcome-Linked Engagement

KPIs (CTR, latency, crash-rate) tied to squad incentives—no vanity metrics.

Transparent Partnership

Weekly demos, Slack war-room, open burn charts—zero surprises.

Client Testimonial

Steady Rabbit

Co-Founder & CEO

OneAD

We moved from a fragile prototype to India’s #1 gaming super-app without a single all-nighter. Steady Rabbit’s Core-Flex model gave us elite talent on-demand and the predictability investors crave.