Deepan Chakravarthy & Ramprasad Rajendran, Founders, HashCube
Life isn’t a game for them, but gaming made their life. Deepan Chakravarthy and Ramprasad Rajendran are among the few to have endeavoured to explore entertainment as a business avenue. They launched HashCube, a social gaming company, in January 2008, which specialises in making and updating puzzle games on social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Myspace and Friendsterand and on mobile platforms like iPhone. While users can have a fun time playing HashCube games, they can simultaneously improve their level of concentration, memory power and logic skills.
The company is proliferating and this is evident from the fact that its current user base is around 300,000 and the figure is increasing steadily with every passing day. In a very short period of time, Chakravarthy and Rajendran have carved a niche for themselves in puzzle games. Their motive is not just to reap profit but to ensure that while the users enjoy the games, they also improve their focus and memory power.
“We want to create more games, and make them available on more social networking sites. This apart we are also striving to reach out to millions of people for expanding our user base,” said Chakravarthy.
It is surprising that the two young and talented entrepreneurs opted for taking risk instead of going for a comfortable 9-5 job. But what they have to say about the alternative instantly clears all the doubts, “We are passionate about what we do, and no luxuries in this world could have bribed us to do anything different. We simply love creating games and watch people enjoy them,” said Rajendran.
Increasing the user base has so far been the biggest challenge the duo has faced. But the challenge was not completely insurmountable either. “We struggled to increase our user base from zero to tangible numbers, and it was a real challenge given the fact that the market is already flooded with so many application developers. It’s a very competitive field, but we know how to make space for ourselves,” said Chakravarthy
When asked about the biggest mistake they made as amateur entrepreneurs, Chakravarthy and Rajendran candidly said that they had just stepped in the race and it was too early to talk about mistakes.
Setting up the company wasn’t a cinch; it required a lot of investment which the budding entrepreneurs successfully managed to procure. HashCube was an incubatee of iAccelerator, a programme designed by the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A), which supports ICT-based start up companies in their endeavour to become world-class technology companies.
The company was recognised for its efforts in some blogs and was also featured in an article in one of the recent editions of Daily News & Analysis (DNA) newspaper.
Ask them what keeps them buckled on to the rollercoaster ride of entrepreneurship and they say in unison, “We like what we do.” The sheer number of users who play HashCube games and keep coming back, suggesting features and providing feedback, keeps them motivated.
Their vision for 2010 is to increase the user base to at least 5 million active gamers a month.
