Today, Razer derives about 15 per cent of its revenue from software and services. Services revenue has grown fast, albeit from a low base, to US$35.7 million in the first half, including its Razer Gold virtual credits and fledgling fintech business, and contributes about 20 per cent of the group’s gross profit.

The company has 70 million registered user accounts, an increase of 40 per cent from a year earlier. These are mostly young people, and a big proportion of these users in emerging markets are unbanked or underbanked – industry jargon for kids without credit cards or bank accounts.

For its fintech business, Razer Pay’s e-wallet app signed up about 1 million accounts since its launch more than a year ago in Malaysia. The company recently tied up with Visa for a Razer-branded prepaid payment service and will explore micro-finance services.

“Youths are a hard-to-reach segment and authenticity is important for reaching millennials,” Tan said. Many companies fail because they try to create a brand to appeal for youths but lack the street cred.

Gamers are overwhelmingly young, but they also stay gamers as they get older, providing continuous opportunities for “monetisation” in what marketers like to call “stickiness.”

It also helps that gaming has come a long way from a niche hobby associated with nerdy boys holed up in their bedrooms, to the multibillion-dollar mainstream industry that it is today, with professional e-sports on one end of the spectrum to commuters playing mini-games on their smartphones in the subway.

Casinos have retrofitted viewing halls to broadcast e-sports tournaments where before the same screens beamed NBA games or Formula One.

In e-sports, Razer has more than 2.3 million followers across its social media platforms as of July 2019 and supports over 18 e-sports teams, including in China. Among its latest addition are Evil Geniuses, Alliance and Top e-sports, a leading League of Legends team in China.

The mainstreaming of gaming is serving companies like Razer well.

Razer was widely considered a cult gaming company (and probably still is for its hard core fans). When we last met at Razer’s Causeway Bay store in Hong Kong, a young customer shopping for headphones with his mother was visibly elated at the chance encounter and rushed for Tan’s autograph. Hard core fans have got tattoos of the triple-serpent company logo and in a well-publicised case, his face.

“Razer does not need to go mainstream, mainstream will come to us,” Tan said.

So one can imagine the fan base lapping up the latest services and products that Razer throws at them, if done right.

Tan is trying to “monetise” the community by partnering with more companies eager to market to the youth segment. The priority now is to scale and Razer is “barely getting started,” he said. The company has increased its revenue steadily since 2016 and losses have narrowed after reaching a low in the second half of 2017. For the six months ended June 30, Razer lost US$47 million on revenue of US$357 million.

Investors appear to like the story Tan is telling.

Razer’s share price is 55 per cent higher this year in Hong Kong trading, compared with a 39 per cent gain for Nintendo in Tokyo. By comparison, Hong Kong’s benchmark Hang Seng Index has been flat.

To be sure, “authenticity” can be ephemeral and what’s fashionable can quite quickly become unfashionable. Tan corrected me when I suggested that Razer was trying to tap on youth culture and is following the gamer.

“I will not say we’re tapping … we created gaming culture, and we’re growing alongside with it,” Tan said. “Gaming has become a euphemism for youth.”

So, Razer is a youth company?