It’s hard to ignore the fact that over the last few years India is slowly being recognised not only as a potentially major destination for developers to market their games, but also a viable option for devs to set up ancillary studios. The latest example of this is the introduction of acountry exclusive PUBG Mobile India after the Indian Government banned the game citing cyber security reasons.
Add to that the recent unveiling of Ubisoft and Epic Games offices in the country and the critical acclaim received by Nodding Heads’ Raji. You can see the start of a gaming boom for India. Another such story comes via a relatively small Bangalore based studio called Bombay Play that has raised $1 million to develop social games for global markets.
The investment comes from Lumikai, which announced its first gaming fund for India in August and made Bombay Play its first investment in the country. They are joined by existing investors, Playco and Leo Capital.
Jones and his co-founder, Abhas Saroha, aim to diverge from traditional Indian studios that develop regionally popular games like Teen Patti and Ludo to create games with a more global appeal. For example, Bombay Play’s first multiplayer party game, Card Party, has over 10 million downloads. The studio is already at work on its second game, Lockdown Brawl, a card battle game with the Covid-19 triggered lockdown as its setting.
“We have something to prove here, that world-class games can be made in India. That’s why we decided to include the name Bombay for a popular place that everyone knows about India,” said founder, Oliver Jones in an interview with GamesBeat.
Like many other Indian devs, Jones and Saroha have stated that India has a lot to offer the gaming world, and not just as an asset farm or a destination for ‘freemium’ games. “India is viewed as the back office of the world, with a lot of software service companies and that they just handle the back office for the game companies,” concluded Jones.
Bombay Play’s Lockdown Brawl is now available to download as a beta on Android.
