In an exclusive interview with Ashutosh Asthana, Assistant Editor, Thinking Aloud, Arijit Bhattacharyya, Founder & CEO Virtualinfocom, speaks about the gaming industry of India.
TA: How did you get the idea to start your company?
AB: When I was in 6th standard, I used to write comics and draw fictional characters out of mythology. After school, I thought that there are many artists who are not making money but as I was a creative person who could code, draw, and make storylines so I mixed each part of them. Back in 1998, when I was 17, just passed out of my school, I wanted to do something for the country, I wanted to build an ecosystem. In my initial days, I couldn't make money out of games. That time I used to do a lot of machine assembling, went door to door for selling the machines. Through that, I made some money, placed a couple of guys as employees and then slowly build the company. Today we are a 300 people company, with more than 175 own IP, as well as a couple of odd things like few underwater drones, few OTT platforms, 6 movies we have produced till date, became movie partner with countries like, Russia, China, Spain, France and certainly India. We have made approximately 4 games out of Kolkata with all the superstars. The basic USP of ours is to emotion capture the real-life superstars, and then make a game out of it and make money.
TA: India can become the world's leading markets in gaming sector worth 71 billion Indian rupees in 2021, how do you see your contribution to the growth?
AB: We have already got approximately 50 million user base. Certainly, that's a huge market that we are going to tap and I am sure that with the kind of gaming experience we are going to give with Indian context, we will get good attraction from India and abroad as well. The kind of games that we build using real people and Indian superheroes, it has helped those superheroes to develop a fan base.
TA: According to you, what is the future, mobile gaming or computer gaming?
AB: I call it as only gaming. The medium is different. If you look at VR glass as a glass, that's a medium and mobile is a different kind of medium altogether. If you look at mobile games and compare it with PC, Xbox or PlayStation, it doesn't have that much amount of speed. Till today, the actual gamers are into console gaming or PC gaming and not mobile. From an industry perspective, if you have to bring all those gamers into mobile platforms, you need a different kind of device. You need gamepads so that they can play and enjoy it. I am sure, in India, the market will grow like anything which is there in the Asian market and the market of US.
TA: What are the challenges that the Indian gaming industry is currently facing?
AB: The major challenge that I can see right now is that the game developers are not thinking out of the box so they are not making unique games. A lot of games are being copied from the games of West. Another important challenge is that the Indian gaming companies lack marketing strategies. Every gaming company has to understand who is their target audience and market as a whole and then create a concept out of it and move forward to create a game. There are many budding game developers who are doing very well in this sector. The basic need is to understand how to sell, where to sell and how to get a good publisher. Many times we are not able to get good publishers. Moreover, the game developers need an ecosystem, which is evolving slowly.
TA: How is the Indian gaming industry different from the industry of US or China?
AB: I don't see any difference in the gaming industry of India and abroad. We are making a lot of games for European, Chinese and American companies and these games are doing very well in the market. If you look at the content making aspect, we are doing really well. Still, if you want to compare the Indian market with other markets, then the comparison will be on the basis of the audience, that's where we are lacking, we are not lacking in technological aspect. The Indian audience has to evolve like the audience in US or China. So, a change in the audience is required, then only the gaming companies will get that amount of incentive that they should get.
TA: What are the future goals of your company?
AB: My next goal is to make movies with all the superheroes that we have created in the gaming world. We will be implementing the best of technologies in it by using VFX, VR etc. That is the immediate dream that I have right now.
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