2018
CricPlay (Fantasy Sports App)
App & Web
Real Money Gaming
B2C
CricPlay was an Indian fantasy cricket gaming app developed by Times Internet, where cricket fans could create their own virtual teams, compete in fantasy contests, and earn rewards based on real-world match performance.
Timeline
6 Weeks
My Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
2PD, 1PM, 2FE, 2BE, 2QA
Situation
In 2018, India’s fantasy sports landscape was rapidly growing, driven by increased internet access and consumer engagement with cricket.
Times Internet decided to launch a free, user-centric fantasy cricket app ahead of the high-visibility Indian Premier League (IPL) season.
Task
Lead the end-to-end UX/UI design of the app under a strict 6-week deadline to ensure launch before IPL 2018.
Design a simple, intuitive, and engaging experience to differentiate from competitors with cluttered onboarding and paid entry models.
Action
Conducted competitive analysis, user interviews, persona development, scenarios, and sketching to understand user motivations and pain points.
Designed key user flows, wireframes, and prototypes emphasizing ease of use—e.g., three-step mobile number signup and in-app real-time updates.
Removed friction by prioritizing free play, ad-free experience, and a consistent interface focused on what users want to see.
Collaborated closely with developers and QA to iterate quickly through design cycles during the tight timeline.
Result
Launched successfully within the IPL-related deadline, achieving feature completeness for the core experience.
Featured as a Google Play “Editor’s Choice” app within 2 weeks of launch, boosting visibility and early adoption.
App grew toward ~1 million downloads within 8 months, establishing a competitive position in the fantasy cricket category.
~₹5 crore ARR.
Final Product
Information Architecture
Raising the bar for the entire industry
For most fantasy sports apps, users generally exhibit a specific pattern of behaviour: they create a fantasy team, submit it, and then return to the app solely to check the leaderboard. CricPlay introduced new additions to the fantasy app segment such as Daily predictions, Real Time score updates and a full match score card to make the user experience much more intuitive and improve the on screen time.
Users no longer needed to toggle between apps to view match scores and their fluctuating fantasy scores, as real-time score updates are available within CricPlay, allowing both to be monitored in the same app.
Home screen
Match Updates
Contests
Team Creation
Featured on Google Play Store
Launch and Impact
CricPlay was introduced in April 2018, and within a period of 8 months, we crossed 1 million downloads on the Play Store and generated an estimated revenue of of ~₹5 crores.
Got featured as a Google Play “Editor’s Choice” app within 2 weeks of launch, boosting visibility and early adoption.
The app was later ported to the web, catering specifically to power users.