Gamifying engagement: How WNNR is giving brands control over data in a post-cookie world

In a digital ecosystem flanked by platforms like Meta and Google, intent on gatekeeping customer data due to user privacy, brands today are facing a crisis of outreach. 

They pour massive ad budgets into crowded channels, struggle with fleeting consumer attention, and end up with passive, fragmented data that barely scratches the surface of customer intent. This is the challenge Bengaluru-based startup Two Tree Ventures is solving with its innovative platform WNNR.

Founded by long-time friends and collaborators Trigam Mukherjee and Trilokjit Sengupta, WNNR is a gamified data intelligence platform that aims to transform simple user interactions into rich, actionable customer insights. “The idea for WNNR came while trying to solve a marketing problem for a client,” Trigam, Co-founder and CEO, WNNR, tells YourStory. “We built a prototype for a gamified solution to capture consumer intelligence, and that quickly turned into a powerful standalone platform.”

While the company was incorporated in February 2022, it launched the WNNR platform in January 2025.

From agency founders to martech builders

The duo behind WNNR is no stranger to the marketing ecosystem. Friends since the age of 15, Trigam and Trilokjit followed different yet complementary professional paths in branding and communication before co-founding Bigtuna.in, an integrated marketing agency focused on building campaigns and brand strategies, in 2020. With a combined experience of 40 years, they’ve seen firsthand how brands struggle with meaningful customer engagement in an increasingly digital world.

“The critical pain point we’re solving is the customer intelligence and data visibility gap,” Trigam explains. 

“Brands today collect a mountain of passive third-party data—page views, clicks, demographics—but know very little about what actually drives consumer behaviour. With WNNR, we turn interactions into intelligence. We let brands discover preferences and motivations long before a purchase happens, while also helping them own that data,” he adds.

A platform built for the post-cookie world

WNNR tackles the limitations of both social media and traditional adtech by moving beyond impressions and click-through rates. Instead, it rewards users for engaging—reading, sharing, and answering questions—offering brands ethical, consent-driven first-party data in return.

The platform offers three core products:

• WNNR for Publishers (W.Pub): Gamifies widgets in media content to engage readers.
• G/SaaS: White-labeled, gamified micro-engagement tools that brands can embed into their own digital ecosystems.
• Ad+: Interactive, gamified ad units, which the startup says outperform standard banner ads in both engagement and data capture.

And at the centre of it all is WNNR’s Hive Engine (Hyper Intelligence Value Engine), a proprietary data engine that clusters users based on shared behavioural traits to create high-quality, actionable cohorts.

Business model and early traction

WNNR operates on a SaaS-based revenue model with multiple monetisation streams:

• Customer intelligence subscriptions
• Performance-based pricing
• Enterprise licensing for white-labeled deployments
• Premium analytics services offering deep behaviour-based insights and consulting

With its offerings, WNNR serves a range of use cases across influencer marketing, publisher monetisation, employee engagement, and consumer brand building.

“We’ve just launched Version 0.1 of WNNR and are already building advanced capabilities,” says Trigam. “We’re currently working on our first campaigns with large brands and expect to scale in India and globally over the next 6-12 months.”

WNNR is currently bootstrapped, with an initial investment of approximately $60,000 from the founders. The founders consider SessionM and Playable as global competitors. “They’ve done well outside of India. We’re bringing a similar level of sophistication—tailored to Indian and emerging markets—with a stronger focus on actionable data ownership,” Trigam notes.

The way ahead

Though the startup is currently in the pre-revenue stage, WNNR is actively running pilot campaigns with brands in FMCG, insurance, and consumer electronics. With India’s digital advertising market reaching Rs 80,000 crore and growing, according to a GroupM report, the team believes there’s a significant opportunity in helping brands overcome digital barriers.

“People today don’t just buy products—they buy experiences,” says Trigam. “Social media has become too noisy and impersonal. With WNNR, we’re offering an alternative: a way to engage customers meaningfully, collect ethical first-party data, and reduce dependency on exorbitant media spends.”

Loaded with a plug-and-play product, white-label options, and a focus on data security (the platform is GDPR and DPDPA compliant), WNNR positions itself as an alternative to traditional digital marketing, giving brands greater control over customer relationships.