WinMagic Toys - Energizing Childhood with Wonderful Toys!

Rishabh Rathi

Mar 30, 2021 — 13 min read

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India has traditionally been a risk-averse market, and most toy distributors focused on traditional categories like dolls, vehicles, and guns. Then came WinMagic Toys, which was launched by Mukesh Jagwani and the senior management team in 2017, which disrupted in the toy industry by launching new trendy categories and global brands into the market.

Read this article to know about the success story of WinMagic Toys, founder, growth, vision, mission, and funding.

WinMagic Toys - Company Highlights

Startup Name	WinMagic Toys
Headquarter	Mumbai, India
Sector	Toys & Games
Founder	Mukesh Jagwani
Founded	2017
Parent Organization	WinMagic toys pvt ltd
Website	winmagictoys.com
Contact	Sayali.gaidhani@winmagictoys.com

WinMagic Toys - Vision and Mission
WinMagic Toys - About and How it Works
WinMagic Toys - Products/Services
WinMagic Toys - Target Market Size
Founders of WinMagic Toys and team
WinMagic Toys - Name, Tagline, and Logo
WinMagic Toys - Startup Launch
WinMagic Toys - Marketing Approach
WinMagic Toys - Business Model and Revenue Model
WinMagic Toys - Startup Challenges
WinMagic Toys - Growth
WinMagic Toys - Future Plans

WinMagic Toys - Vision and Mission

WinMagic Toys is a company that creates and distributes world-class marketable & unique products that bring happiness for kids and fulfillment for parents.

They aims to be the ‘go-to’ company that makes it easy for all the international brands desirous of entering India in the kids & games space! WinMagic Toys acts as a catalyst that ongoingly transforms the industry and promotes the cause of India at international platforms.

For the customers, it is a marketing-oriented company that always creates new and innovative categories at retail, provides a significant product or price differentiation, and drives strong communication campaigns to create consumer demand and affect shopper conversions at retail.

For the employees, it is a company that empowers them to create the future they dream of, for themselves and their families, which makes them spring into action every day.

WinMagic Toys is a company that delivers a veritable portfolio in its space, that touches consumers from birth to their full lifecycle. They sees their final play to be a company with two separate and equally thriving divisions, third party distribution and owned portfolio marketed globally, with a host of owned brands, being made in India!

WinMagic Toys - About and How it Works

WinMagic Toys creates and spreads happiness, pride, and oneness amongst kids and families! A full portfolio-kids' product creation, manufacturing, marketing & distribution company, that touches consumers from birth & remains a companion for life, through its product offerings.

The company dominates the pre-school retail aisle with Paw Patrol, PJ Masks, and Peppa Pig toy lines that are the top 3 licensed content and toy properties globally as well as in India. Similarly, this fastest-growing toy company of India has also transformed the girls’ aisle with brands like L.O.L Surprise! Dolls, Hatchimals, and Shopkins.

To ensure product quality, the company only works with global brands that are already supplying to the US and Europe. Their products comply with American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), European Standard EN 71, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and other independent standards likes Facility and Merchandise Authorization (FAMA) certification by The Walt Disney Company.

Recently, the government of India conducted a survey where 66% of imported toys failed to comply with quality standards – these are all unbranded toys. WinMagic Laboratories have claimed that not even a single toy that it has offered into the country has ever failed a test.

WinMagic Toys - Products/Services

Fisher-Price and Thomas were given a run for their money, with WinMagic Toys distributing Spin Master’s - Paw Patrol, which is today the number 1 preschool licensed toy property at retail. Paw Patrol is a TV series that runs on Nick Junior, a content co-owned by Viacom and Canada’s Spin Master Entertainment (SME).

Spin Master Toys, a top 5 listed toy company globally, and a sister concern of SME owns the global rights to Paw Patrol toys. Through its distribution partnership with Spin Master, WinMagic Toys brought into the country many trendy toy lines, like Hatchimals for example – that became toy retailer Hamleys’ number 1 selling toy when it was launched in 2016, while the inventory lasted.

Hatchimals is an egg-shaped tech toy, that has a unique hatching feature, where with a kid’s love & care an electronic pet hatches itself out of an egg and there are various play possibilities at pre-hatching, during-hatching, and post-hatching stages. Hatchimals has since then developed into a veritable array of collectible and tech toys that have become one of the best-selling toy ranges in the girls’ aisle.

Through its partnership with Spin Master, the company is set to launch toy lines like Bakugan, a massive hit from a decade ago that is being relaunched by Spin Master globally, Batman & DC action figure lines based on the popular entertainment franchises and Monster Jam Monster vehicles lines based on World’s Number 1 Monster Truck racing show.

The company has created the category of girls collectibles in India literally from scratch. Shopkins, from Moose Toys of Australia, was its entry into the girl's collectibles aisle which took the industry by pleasant surprise in 2015 and kickstarted the trend of girls collectibles in India, like in global markets a few years ago. Along with Hatchimals, L.O.L, Hairdorables from Just Play, Bananas, and Twisty Petz apart from others, WinMagic Toys has been leading in the girl’s collectibles category in the Indian toy industry.

WinMagic Toys - Target Market Size

With 26% of the population under the age of 15 years, it’s no surprise that the Indian toy industry is accelerating. Valued at USD 1.5 Billion in 2018, registering a CAGR of 15.9% during the year 2011-2018. According to market research firm IMARC, the market is further estimated to cross USD 3.3 Billion by 2024, growing at a CAGR of 13.3% during 2019-2024.

The estimated Rs 2-lakh-crore global toy market is dominated by China (from a manufacturing point of view, America is the biggest from a consumption point of view), which sells close to Rs 1.4 lakh crore worth of products annually. In India, the toy market is dominated by unbranded Chinese products with 90% of the market being unorganized.

In a post COVID scenario, toys & games, and in general kids play assumes even more relevance with kids and parents staying more at home.

Founders of WinMagic Toys and team

Mukesh Jagwani is the founder of WinMagic Toys.

Mukesh has over two decades of practice including leadership roles in setting up multinationals in India to leading start-ups to profitability and turnover goals. He is a complete believer in empowering people to be the best they can be, unconditionally, and, in keeping commitments ruthlessly!

The management team comprises of:

Heena Natu - National Sales Manager (Key Accounts & Exports) with over 13 years of experience in modern trade (retail chains) account management, ex Mattel, Ex Pepe Jeans.
Shailesh Kumar - National Sales Manager - General Trade with over 18 years of experience in general trade distribution, Ex Funskool, Ex Nuby.
Surabhi Mathur - Marketing Manager (INDIA & SAARC) with over 10 years of experience in Marketing communications - ex EURO RSCG, EX Times of India, Ex Business Standard.
Sandeep Nirban - Finance Manager. Chartered Accountant, MBF with over 7 years of experience, Ex Reliance, CIPLA.

Heena, Shailesh, and Surabhi are part of the founding team along with Mukesh.

The current company size of WinMagic Toys is around 50 employees. The recruiting team is very selective about hiring talent. They always look for character and not personality. Since the team firmly believes that character is in-built and personality is what you acquire and get trained in.

To elaborate, they look for qualities like energy, enthusiasm, willingness & intent to take responsibility for not only their job description but also have a natural intent to help & support others, humility, integrity, and authenticity. In addition to character traits, they work on training people on maturity and ability to get things done through a work environment that is straightforward and holds people to account.

They focus a lot on training people for their development and growth – not just for business but overall holistic growth of an individual and the team looks at life as one. Not a split between work and life. When people grow, they bring all about growth to be it at home or work.

WinMagic Toys - Name, Tagline, and Logo

Winners with the magic of play made WinMagic Toys!

WinMagic Toys - Startup Launch

WinMagic Toys are known for their freshness and new ways to play at retail. Since its inception, India has seen some of the categories that never existed in the country in the toys and games aisle before. It created Collectables as a category with iconic brands like Shopkins. They launched all globally successful brands including - LOL Surprise! Dolls, Hatchimals Colleggtibles, Hairdorables, Soft n Slo – squishable, etc.

WinMagic Toys always offers brands and play patterns that are trending globally. They are dominating the retail aisles with the latest DIY trends. For the girls, the categories were limited to dolls and a few accessories, however, the company has brought all these different categories into the country.

Preschool aisles were dominated traditionally by brands like Thomas or Fisher-Price which are owned by legacy players like Mattel, who has been in the country for 30 years. And nothing changed for the past 30 years, companies were averse to getting anything new to India. But, WinMagic Toys decided to change that and offered consumers products that have been trending globally and created that access for Indian consumers to world-class toys.

It launched the 3 biggest Preschool properties in India- Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig, and PJ Masks, which are the dominating brands at retail as well as on TV as content. From a retailer point of view, they always bring in a portfolio that is unique or differentiated from a price perspective.

The success of the WinMagic model can be attributed to three major factors that are key to their way of working:

Firstly innovative, on-the-trend, and unique feature-driven products and a category domination approach.

"We do not mind cannibalizing ourselves at the aisle, as, if we do not, then we are leaving ourselves open for a competitor to do that. We grow by increasing our category share even if we may have brands that compete within a category. Like Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig and P.J Masks, or the many collectible brands in the girls’ aisle.", explained Mukesh.

The second factor is retail visibility & break-through marketing that enables their products to stand out at retail and have a strong recall amongst the kid fans.

"For example, at Toys “R” Us, we have 26 dedicated brand spaces and at Hamleys all our brands are present with key brands like Paw Patrol and Hatchimals occupying dedicated spaces. This approach has enabled us to be a top 3 vendor at all the retail points including an over 20% share of the shelf at top mom & pop retail outlets in the country.", said Mukesh Jagwani, founder of WinMagic Toys.

Finally, the company's industry and functional expert teams apply the right load of energy, ownership, and meticulousness from product selection to business operations at all levels.

WinMagic Toys - Marketing Approach

They are a marketing-oriented company and their marketing team does not follow the box-in-box-out approach. They believe in launching unique marketable concepts and back them up with 360-degree marketing efforts. WinMagic Toys' social media campaigns are appreciated by retailers and the team is the trailblazer on the digital front in the industry.

Some of the key marketing tie-ups of the company include:

Youtube Sensation and a famous toy reviewer - My Miss Anand
Hatchimals video that was viewed 4.2M times -

Hatchimals video

Wrapples Dance challenge with 3.8M Views -

Wrapples Dance challenge

WinMagic Toys has also partnered with Child actor Myra Singh, from Kulfi Kumar Bajewala.
Wrapples Dance Challenge
WinMagic Toys' Social Media Handles

WinMagic Toys - Business Model and Revenue Model

Revenue Generation Model – WinMagic Toys directly sells to retail chains, and resellers on Amazon, Flipkart. It also sells to sister concerns of Amazon, Flipkart, etc. Being a foreign-funded company, they cannot do multi-brand retail. In the General trade sector, it supplies to the sub-distributors who then in turn supply to mom and pop stores. The company caters to 3000+ stores. It works on a Firm sale Model.

“We cater to an upmarket target group and follow a consumer-centric ‘perceived-value’ pricing model. We always strive to position our products well within the perceptual price elasticity that our consumers are willing to accept, happily. To achieve that we follow a line pricing financial model, and always work with suppliers who understand the Indian consumers’ price sensitivity and are willing to move most favorably on unit costing.”, added Mukesh Jagwani, owner of WinMagic toys.

This ensures that they can make the right pricing available to the consumer. For a target group looking at a lower price band, they have their private labels and they plan to aggressively expand this business. WinMagic Toys provides a price point of as low as Rs 50 to as high as Rs 15,000.

WinMagic Toys - Startup Challenges

The challenges that WinMagic Toys faced were - Duplicates, unorganized nature of trade, government regulations, experiments: cash & carry model, launching collectible toys, new/trending brands like Paw Patrol, Hatchimals – even though expensive, PJ Masks, and branding the generic category like bubbles.

In India, the toy market is dominated by unbranded Chinese products with 90% of the market being unorganized. These Chinese toys do not comply with the channel, quality or safety norms and thus turn out to be much cheaper for the Indian consumer, whose purchase decision is heavily influenced by price. It’s not uncommon to see small mom and pop stores selling Chinese replicas of the Disney/Marvel or DC line of toys due to their ever-increasing demand.

However, making licensed, high-quality international brands available in India continues to be a challenge due to tough import norms and the recent increase in import duty. As a result, small businesses, who wish to legitimately license and sell these products suffer, while low quality, low-cost Chinese toys continue to flood the market.

WinMagic Toys - Growth

With a veritable portfolio of world-class brands of toys, games & kids merchandise, WinMagic Toys has a presence across all the major toy retail chains namely Hamleys, Toys "R" Us, Landmark Stores, Shoppers Stop, Crossword, Hyper City, Lulu along with 3,000 Mom & Pop stores and over 20,000 outlets for mass products through wholesalers.

The company has also partnered with all major online channels including Amazon, Flipkart, Firstcry, Hopscotch, etc. With legendary brands in the portfolio like – Paw Patrol, PJ Masks, Hatchimals, Shopkins, etc., WinMagic Toys is the No.1 third party distributor in India in the toy specialty channel.

In under 3 years, the company has grown its portfolio to 40 plus brands and plays in 84% of addressable toys & games categories at retail. The year 2020 is the year of boys, with the likes of Batman, DC, Monster Jam and Bakugan from Spin Master slated to launch in the next few months, and brands like Infinity Nado, that was recently acquired & re-launched, and Treasure X the boys collectible brand launched in the first half of 2019, going steady at retail.

WinMagic Toys today are India’s largest independent distributor in the toy specialty channel, competing with a few of the legacy players, like Mattel, Hasbro, and Funskool who have had their presence in India for more than 30 years. In 2019, they sold more than 100 crores worth of toys from retail, which marks the fastest growth by any player in the industry over the years!

Some of the suppliers of WinMagic Toys are Spinmaster – World leader in innovative toys, Just Play – A manufacturer known for its high-class plush toys, and Moose Toys – A company that created a revolution in the collectible’s category. Some of the customers are Hamleys, Toys "R" Us, Crossword, Amazon, Flipkart, and Firstcry.

WinMagic Toys - Future Plans

WinMagic Toys has plans to constantly innovate & upgrade their portfolio. They will be soon adding world-class toys like Batman & DC action figures, Bakugan, Monster Jam vehicles, and its own unique private labels in categories like Games and Puzzles, Sports Goods, & Impulse Play.

The top 3 ranked vendor, with retailers like Hamleys & Toys "R" Us, WinMagic Toys has always been ahead of the curve. Having already crossed Rs. 60 crores in revenue in 2019, the company is sure to cross Rs. 100 crores by FY 2020. Marching forward, WinMagic Toys aims to go for listing besides generating a turnover of over Rs. 500 crores in the next five years.