Hitwicket Superstars wasn't grabbing huge headlines till it received the Prime Minister's AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge within the video games class. It emerged as essentially the most favorite cellular gaming app, beating Scarfall: The Royale Combat and World Cricket Championship – WCC2. The sport is an interactive cellular cricket technique sport that's obtainable each on Google Play and the App Store. It has gathered over a million downloads on Google Play Store and has an honest 4.1 star ranking. Lauded for its graphics and addictive gameplay, the commentary contained in the app is obtainable in a number of languages together with English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi, Marathi, and even Hyderabadi.
While Hitwicket has all of the components of turning into a promising startup, it nonetheless is a great distance from standing alongside gaming megastars like PUBG. The whole funds raised by the corporate stand at $600,000 (roughly Rs 44,147,200) and key angel buyers embrace The Chennai Angels. Its whole worker energy at the moment stands at 42, with the headquarters in Hyderabad.
Experts opinion: Counterpoint analyst, Ankit Malhotra says, “Indian smartphone gaming is still in a nascent stage but holds an enormous potential thanks to a present 500 million+ installed base and the opportunity of converting feature phones users in future. In last 1.5-2 years, better performance on phones and availability of low cost Internet has increased the interest in smartphone gaming. Some games have found major success - prime examples being PUBG, Pokemon Go and both of them have some common elements apart from addictive gameplay which is the social component attached to it. When users are playing with their friends, the stickiness of user increases and word of mouth travels faster - Any game which can do that will be successful, a very recent example is ‘Among Us' - solid gameplay with successful social component made it successful.”
TechArc analyst Faisal Kawoosa says, “Gaming is going to be the next digital entertainment use case which will attract millions of users. So, this is the time to be in gaming. Within gaming, mobile gaming is going to see the growth as other are either declining or stagnating with users preferring to extract more out of smartphones. At the same time, smartphones have also evolved exponentially to support use cases like gaming.
The only suggestion to gaming companies from India would be to go-to-market with all perfection and best immersive experience. This is not an area where users have patience to wait for the platform to evolve over a period of time. They want the best flawless experience with most creative elements right from the beginning. So if, the gaming doesn't start with all the big bang, it has lesser chances of survival and sustainability.
Hitwicket Superstars' VP of growth and co-founder, Keerti Singh gives us an insight on what went into building the game. She shares some unique insights on all the hustle, and even speaks of plans of hosting a Hitwicket World Cup in 2023. They even intend to get sponsors on board for the global tournament.
1. What were you doing before Hitwicket was brought to life?
Post my engineering at VIT Vellore, I worked at Indian Oil for a couple of years. Wanted to do more and hence pursued MBA at ISB, Hyderabad. I then started working at Amazon in a leadership role where I managed teams across India and Costa Rica.
2. What was the conceptualization process behind Hitwicket? When was it you finally decided you want to start Hitwicket?
I grew up watching cricket and falling in love with the sport. The beauty of cricket lies in the strategy aspect of the game and conversation that keep following long after the match is over. Cricket is also one of the most inclusive sports that resonates with people regardless of their age, gender, and their socio-economic backgrounds.
During my MBA, I was casually hooked onto mobile gaming and started playing mobile games for 5-10 minutes daily as a stress buster. While I moved on to working at Amazon, the daily habit of playing for 15-20 min continued, a short gaming session to completely zone out after intense meetings. In fact, a lot of my colleagues and managers were playing mobile games too. Clash of clans was a big rage among all around me.
Mobile gaming industry was taking the world by storm, becoming a multibillion industry in a span of a decade. While people were playing mobile games, no one was talking about the gaming industry and its potential. Career options still centered around consultancy, fin-tech and so on.
While cricket is the second most followed sport in the world, with over two billion fans, there were no ‘Clash of Clans' sort of strategy game for cricket. There was an evident gap in the market, and an opportunity of the decade to combine the mass appeal of cricket with the accessibility of mobile gaming to create a highly immersive cricket game that can engage the billion cricket fans world over.
I soon teamed up with my co-founder Kashyap Reddy, who had come back from Sweden and had always been a passionate gamer and a cricket fan. We wanted to build a world class cricket game from India, for India and the world. The most successful games in the world have highly immersive experiences. We started building Hitwicket for the cricket fans - to partake in a magical experience that'd take them to a fictional cricketing world with infinite possibilities.
3. Elaborate a little bit about the game.
Hitwicket Superstars is a mobile cricket strategy game available on Google Play and the App Store. It's currently enjoyed by more than a million gamers globally. Gamers in Hitwicket Superstars are transported to a magical cricketing realm where they own a cricket team of superpowers. Gamers must train their players - from rookies to superstars who command a diverse range of superpowers - enabling them to hit 12 runs in one ball and conceding negative runs to the opposition. Gamers must strategize, team up with others, and engage in a battle of wits to compete in a massive multiplayer involving millions of cricket fans globally.
4. Were there any operational challenges that you faced when starting Hitwicket?
In India, mobile gaming was still at a nascent stage in 2015 when we decided to build Hitwicket. Mobile gaming is a culmination of technology and creativity, and to create a highly immersive experience would require the best of minds to make our undertaking a success. Finding the right talent, people who are smart, quirky, passionate and creative was a challenge, compounded by the reality that a lot of ambitious folks wanted to work in e-commerce, fin-tech and consulting. There is still a dearth of gaming institutes in India.
For our recruitment drives, we began looking for not only technical aptitude, but the right attitude. We conducted an e-sports tournament via our own game, Hitwicket Superstars, to filter out students with a passion for mobile gaming in particular. This ensured that candidates would have a clear idea of the kind of product they'd be working on from the get-go. Through this process, we could filter out people who were very smart and creative.
5. Did you have to put in any money to start the business? When did you decide that funding was required? Could you offer broad details on how a startup gets funding in India and how Hitwicket managed its first round?
We had bootstrapped Hitwicket with our savings. After we launched, we received good traction in terms of engagement, our users were talking about the game on social media. In Pakistan, a group of Hitwicket users initiated an offline meet up on their own to meet other Hitwicket users and the meet up was later covered by the local press in Pakistan. We saw users loving the game and engaging with it at a deeper level, that's when we realized we needed to scale, for which funding was necessary. We sought out investors, and found success with The Chennai Angels (TCA). R. Narayanan, who was our lead Investor and President of TCA, particularly resonated with our product and has been a constant pillar of support and guidance ever since.
6. You won PM Modi's AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. Tell us more about that experience.
We first heard about the AatmaNirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge through a team in a WhatsApp group chat. Our honorable Prime Minister made a clarion call to reach out to the homegrown startups in the field of gaming, media and entertainment with the AatmaNirbhar Challenge. We knew we had to compete in it. It was the first time that mobile gaming was getting recognized for its mammoth potential by the Prime Minister of the country.
Despite work from home, everyone was an integral part of the win. The product was reflective of the entire team's effort. When we won, everybody was elated - it wasn't just a win for the team, but a personal milestone for every team member.
My father is a war veteran who fought the 1971 India-Bangladesh War. Upon winning the first prize in gaming and being recognized as the “digital warriors” on the forefront of homegrown startups by PM Modi himself, my father was so proud. He felt the way in which he served his nation, I'm serving India by creating experiences that may delight individuals and make them joyful.
Contributing to the gaming ecosystem, and bringing glory to our nation as a hotbed of world-class content material has been an aspirational objective for us. This win was a step in that path.
7. Could you share some fascinating tales about your preliminary days? What learnings have you ever picked up from these hustle days?
The preliminary days had been difficult and memorable on the similar time. When I began out with Hitwicket, everybody thought leaving Amazon and stepping into the then-nascent cellular gaming business was a dangerous selection. Now that I look again, I'm glad I stayed true to my conviction.
Indian players are fascinating and there is a lot to study them. It's typically presumed that Indians do not spend lots, however we have had many players even from tier-2 cities spending on the product. When a kirana retailer proprietor spends even a nominal quantity to derive premium expertise from the sport, you notice the wonder and mass-appeal that lies in cellular gaming, notably one pertaining to cricket.
As cellular gaming hadn't actually taken off in India, we knew we had lots to be taught. We confronted a various viewers of various age, geographical and earnings teams. We had been very bullish on experimenting and would launch an app replace each week to raised perceive the heart beat of our consumer and what would maintain them engaged for months and years.
8. Is there any specific incident that's monumental in Hitwicket's journey? Please share that incident with our readers. Also, define the entire huge milestones that Hitwicket has crossed since its inception.
Within a 12 months of our launch in 2015, Hitwicket received the Best App Award by HYSEA. In 2017, we had been chosen among the many high 10 world startups by HYPE UK. 2018 was an excellent 12 months for us, as we had been chosen among the many high 30 gaming startups by Google. 2020 was essentially the most particular of all - being awarded because the #1 Game in India with the AatmaNirbhar App Innovation Challenge.
Sometime again, we began an initiative known as Humans of Hitwicket the place we needed to listen to tales of our customers - why they loved enjoying Hitwicket and the that means it added to their lives. I keep in mind one such consumer who performed cricket on the school degree and sadly met with an accident due to which he was confined to a wheelchair. He reached out to us through this initiative and advised us about how Hitwicket gave him a possibility to reconnect with cricket at a deeper degree - a gateway for him to strategize and lead his personal cricket staff in a battle of wits towards equally passionate staff homeowners worldwide.
It was a really humbling second that Hitwicket was starting to maneuver past its perceived function as a mode of leisure, and has established a deeper, emotional relationship with players.
9. Could you assist give a way of how far Hitwicket has come? From when it started to the place it's now
From a couple of hundred to a few Million customers, Hitwicket has come a great distance. We launched a brand new sport early this 12 months, Hitwicket Superstars. Our first sport was participating however appealed to extra hardcore customers. Hitwicket Superstars comes loaded a great distance with nice artwork, graphics and a easy but efficient gameplay that appeals to the informal gamer as properly. Hitwicket Superstars has acquired greater than 1,000,000 customers properly inside a 12 months of launch and continues to interact customers from numerous walks of life. 15 p.c of our customers are from outdoors India and contribute to twenty p.c of our income.
10. What was it like crusing by the COVID-19 disaster? Did you see a fall in enterprise or sudden spurge? How did you take care of it?
For cellular gaming, COVID-19 had a very good impression that led to loads of engagement, paralleling the web utilization increase made attainable by Jio. While we had been working remotely, it was difficult in its personal manner - nevertheless, each downside is a chance to be taught and reinvent. COVID-19 did that, and in the present day, we're extra grateful for the issues we have now.
11. Any recommendation for younger Indian entrepreneurs on the market?
You want to choose your battles. What issues is that it's essential to have a robust conviction in what you do. Many stroll once they can run. But a handful learns to fly. You can select the simpler path. But you're able to doing extra.
12. What are the large plans sooner or later?
We plan to arrange Hitwicket World Cup in 2023, the grandest e-sport competitors for cricket. There can be playoffs starting at grassroots degree; district degree playoffs will result in zonal playoffs and finally on to the nationwide tier.
48 nationwide groups will compete for the number of 24 who will go on to play the Hitwicket World Cup for 1,000,000 greenback money prize, which will probably be held at an International degree. It's our intention to pick a sponsor of the nationwide staff in every nation. National staff jerseys will probably be customized, and will probably be obtainable on the market each domestically in addition to globally.
Our finish objective is to show digital cricketing right into a format simply adopted by the plenty, reaching out to villages, cities and cities throughout each cricket-loving nation; very a lot akin to the way in which cricket operates in the present day.
13. What is the worker energy? Is Hitwicket hiring at the moment?
Our staff is presently 42-strong. We are all the time looking out for people who find themselves good, artistic and aspire to do one thing that hasn't been accomplished earlier than in India, creating the primary world class cricket sport from India that may delight the billion cricket followers globally.
What would be the most fun tech launch of 2021? We mentioned this on Orbital, our weekly expertise podcast, which you'll be able to subscribe to through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or simply hit the play button under.
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