Bunchball

Bunchball provides a cloud-based software as a service gamification product intended to help companies improve customer loyalty and online engagement using game mechanics.^[1] Bunchball was founded by Rajat Paharia in 2005 and has raised $17.5 million in funding.^[2][3][4] In 2018, Bunchball was acquired by BI Worldwide for an undisclosed amount.^[5]

Bunchball

Available in	English
Founder(s)	Rajat Paharia
URL	www.bunchball.com
Launched	2005
Current status	Active

History

In 2005, Rajat Paharia founded Bunchball.^[6][7] He approached companies like Facebook, Myspace, and dating websites with the proposition of integrating social games.^[8] Bunchball received initial financing from Sunil Singh, the CEO of Informance International, and Payman Pouladdej, an angel investor.^[9]

In October 2006, the company closed a $2 million Series A investment round from Granite Ventures and Adobe Ventures.^[6][10] In 2007, NBC hired Bunchball to develop a community website called Dunder Mifflin Infinity for the popular comedy show, The Office.^[11] In 2007, Bunchball transitioned from social gaming and launched Nitro, which allows organizations to implement game mechanics in social networks, mobile applications, and websites.^[12]

In January 2008, Bunchball received an additional $4 million in a Series B funding round from return investors Granite Ventures and Adobe Ventures.^[9] At the time of the announcement, Bunchball had 28 employees.^[13] In June 2010, Bunchball closed a $6.5 million Series C funding round from Triangle Peak Partners, Northport Investments, Correlation Ventures and Granite Ventures.^[14] Bunchball now has 60 employees and has raised $21 million to date.^[2][15]

Software

Bunchball Nitro is a gamification platform which aims to motivate online user engagement.^[16] It contains a set of game mechanics, including badges, team points, and leader boards for websites, social communities, mobile applications, and desktop and enterprise applications.^[7][14] It currently generates 70 million unique users and 2.3 billion actions each month.^[17][18][19] In March 2012, Bunchball released an updated version of Nitro, code-named Flamethrower.^[15]

Bunchball Nitro for Salesforce motivates sales teams by adding gamification to Salesforce.com.^[12] The Jive Gamification Module is an add-on module of the Jive social business platform, and is powered by Bunchball Nitro.^[18] It gives users a set of missions to complete, each of which exposes them to a critical piece of functionality within the Jive platform.^[18] Nitro for IBM Connections helps businesses train new users and keep existing users engaged within the IBM Connections application.^[20] Using the Nitro platform, businesses can employ gamification techniques, like completing missions and earning rewards, to engage users with IBM Connections.^[20]

Major projects

In 2007, 40,000 people generated more than 1 million page views on Dunder Mifflin Infinity, a separate NBC Universal website which Bunchball developed. Dunder Mifflin Infinity gives users the experience of being an "employee" at Dunder Mifflin, the fictional company featured in the show.^[21]

In 2009, the USA Network hired Bunchball to “gamify” the website of Psych, a television show.^[22][23] Page views surged to 16 million last season, up from 9 million the season before.^[24][25] The average visitor came 4 to 5 times per month, compared with just twice a month the previous season, and stayed on the site for 22 minutes a visit, up from 14 minutes.^[24][25]

In December 2010, Bunchball Nitro powered Playboy’s Facebook app, called Miss Social, which was a month-long competition between women who aspired to be in Playboy.^[26][27] Due to the competition, Playboy saw an 85 percent rate of re-engagement and a 60 percent improvement in revenues from one month to the next. Since starting the app in December, Playboy’s active user base has grown to 80,000.^[26][27]

In 2011, Bunchball partnered up with the Los Angeles Kings to gamify their fan website.^[8][28]