Studio Dream Games: popularizing Indian epics using mobile gaming platform

When Mumbai-based Umang Mathur talked to his family about leaving a comfortable job with one of India’s leading advertising agencies to create mobile games, he wasn’t, surprisingly enough, met with resistance.

Coming from a family of crazy gamers, where everyone from the oldest to the youngest is hooked to games, the toughest part of starting a self-funded venture (namely, convincing the family) was for him easy!

“I come from a gamers’ family. In my family, each and every person, including the women of the house, is a passionate gamer. Even my mom. She would have tried her hands on almost every game you could think of! It runs in the blood, I guess.”

Umang Mathur, a 30-year-old with a degree in advertising andmedia communication from Solent University (South Hampton,UK) and a master’s increative marketing management, decided to leave his comfortable job at India Cast to follow his passion.

Umang says,

“We’ve been listening to tales from the Indian mythology since childhood days, when our grandmas would narrate to us stories from these epics. Since that early age, I was keen to relate to this huge treasure of epics we have. Over the last few years, I also saw that most of us do not have the time or the inclination to read more about our mythological superheroes. So, I thought I could put these two things together- my love for stories from our epics and the desire to educate the young minds about our rich past. I decided to do it in a manner they would find interesting. Seeing that mobile phones are one of the best available mediums to reach out to people, especially the youth, I worked on the idea of games inspired by Indian mythology.”

The result was a startup called Studio Dream Games. A dreamer from Ahmedabad, Umang worked with Viacom before being bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. He put his personal savings of nearly one crore to use for his startup, while also getting a little help from close family and other relatives.

Excerpts from an interview with Umang Mathur:

YS: What sets Studio Dream Games apart from other Indian game developing companies?

UM: I would say it is our global content with a local flavour that makes us different from other game developers in the country. This is the first time ever that someone has come up with a strategic game inspired by Indian mythology, while involving real characters from the Ramayana.

YS: Since you say you were in a plum position with one of the country’s leading advertising agencies, how did your family react when you presented your idea?

UM: As I just explained, all my family members are hooked to games. They were really excited about my plan. I have been really fortunate all the while to get immense support from my parents on this.

YS: Do you have any partners?

UM: No, I don’t have any partners in this venture.

YS: How big was the initial team that started to work on your idea?

UM: We were initially a team of seven members. We had a sound engineer and a designer. We had a game producer cum designer to take care of production. Then, there was a team of three developers to develop the game and a team of two game testers.

YS: How many people do you have with you now?

UM: We haven’t really got too many numbers of members working with us even now, but we have our marketing and communication team in place. Now, we’re a team of 11 people. The Android app was launched in August 2014, while the iPhone app took a little longer to develop. It, too, was released a few days back (February 2015). The initial response has been very encouraging, and we hope the game catches on even faster in the coming days!

YS: Whom were you trying to reach out to with your typically Indian characters? Your target audience, so to say?

UM: Our target audience was Indians staying abroad. We wanted to reach to them in this age and tell their kids more about our own epics, since they don’t have a chance to know too much about these characters. Surprisingly, for us, we got a wonderful response from the UK. Most of our 2,000 plus downloads so far have come from there.

YS: Tell us more about you gameRamaForce.

UM: RamaForce is a real-time strategy game with six levels where Lord Ram has to cross all six levels to reach Sitawho’s been abducted by Ravana. Ram, along with his troop, has to do farming, tower defence on the battle ground, describing the actual story of Ramayana. So this is a carefully thought game based on mythology.

YS: Why only the Ramayana? Why didn’t you think of cashing in on the popularity of characters like Chhota Bheem for example? Or, may be, even Krishna and Hanuman?

UM: From the very inception, wewere committed to producing games with a mythological ‘tadka’. We’ll carefully consider more ideas, of course, in the time to come. Who knows, we might, just pick up Krishna , Hanuman or Chhota Bheem in the future creation, but it will have some relevance with the real tales.

YS: Do you plan to stick to games based on only Indian mythology or might want to try other superheroes. Or, perhaps, think of creating a new entity some day?

UM: I think, initially,we’dlike to stick to Indian characters as our audience is Indian, including the NRIs. We want to create a niche in the Indian gaming industry, which is right now crowded with global content. The existing mythological games are also mostly all speed games. We, as an Indian company, arestriving to root to Indian value systems, and, at the same time, provide fun and exciting moments. We want the gamers to fall in love with the characters and understand mythology. If we ever think that there is a need to shift the focus to different genre of character, we will.

YS: What are your future plans and expansion plans? Where do you manage to raise the funds from?

UM: We would want to add more levels to RamaForce for more user engagement. We also desire to have our own studio to produce more such ingenious games. We’re scouting for investors who can help us in funding our concepts for the next production.

The Android version of the game is 47.48 MB in size and has a 4.4 star rating on the Google Play Store.

A user who has completed all the existing levels asking when he can get to play the game further speaks volumes for the addictiveness and the fun element of the game.

The man behind it all, Umang Mathur says, “Starting Studio Dream Games, I knew, was a big risk, but then I was so sure that this is where my heart lies.”

The founder-owner having put in all his savings into the maiden venture already, Studio Dream Games is now open to investors.Umang is looking forward tomeet investors who see potential in the company to become thenext hub for highly entertaining Indian conceptgames,an not fully explored by other developers yet.