Not out of women’s league: how Harsha Sachdeva’s Funnearn is changing the online gaming landscape

The online gaming industry is no longer a boy’s club. According to a study by POKKT, in 2018, mobile gaming in India had a monthly audience of 38 million men and 21.4 million women, both above the age of 15. While male users spend about 10-20 minutes per day playing mobile games across four to five sessions, female users spend about 8-12 minutes across seven sessions.

Although there has been a rise in the number of female gamers across India, there aren't that many game creators who are women. And upping the game in the industry is Harsha Sachdeva, Co-founder of Funnearn, an RMG platform, who is encouraging women to explore the industry from the technical side.

Launched in October 2018 by Harsha Sachdeva, Hardeep Mehta, and Ashish Solanki, Funnearn is an RMG platform with simple hyper casual games. According to the founders, what sets Funnearn apart from its competitors is that users can play simple one-minute games and also earn money by winning them. Harsha says, the name Funnearn, which was coined by Co-founder Ashish, conveys exactly what that users need to know about the app - having fun and earning money.

The gaming platform

Funnearn builds games around basic cognitive skills, which last just sixty seconds. As of now, the platform offers seven games, and its most recent addition - Intelligent Pattern Learning (IPL) - tests players’ memory by asking them to remember a set of numbers and arrange them in ascending order. The games don’t have particular time slots, and players have the convenience of joining them at any time. Harsha claims Funnearn is one of the only platforms that allows players to compete among others matched with the same skill level, giving them a fair chance to win. The platform mostly targets adults between ages 18 and 40 in various regions across India.

“Language and geography aren’t really constraints, because the app is available in six different languages - English, Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Tamil. We will be adding more soon,” says Harsha.

The app, which is currently available on both Android and iOS, has a user base of 150,000, and claims to gain around 15,000 new users every month.

However, there is a huge disparity between the number of women and men using the app. While men comprise 93 percent of the user population, women make up just seven percent.

A promising industry

Today, RMG is a fast-growing industry in India, and has a variety of categories such as trivia, fantasy sports, in-depth quizzes, and skill-based gaming. The broad online gaming space in the country is already valued at around $890 million, and is expected to grow to $1 billion by 2021. Some of the prominent players in the space include Adda52 and Dream11.

Since there are many new entrants in the RMG space, Harsha thinks it will be interesting to observe and be part of the action as it unfolds.

Funnearn earns revenue through contest commissions and in-app purchases. Since its launch in October 2018, the startup has made Rs 40 lakh in revenues. Currently bootstrapped, the team said it is in talks with potential investors. Recently, at Kickstart 2019, Funnearn was one of the top ten shortlisted startups among hundred others, who got a chance to pitch their ideas to the city’s top investors.

Also read: If trivia is your jam, quiz app Qureka rewards you to stay ahead of the game

Overcoming challenges

Harsha says, one of the biggest challenges the startup faced was getting banned by Facebook. It was told the platform was promoting cash play contests, through paid ad campaigns.

“Skill-based gaming and gambling is hard to differentiate, because both have cash as the common criterion. We had to prove what we were doing was legal in India, and were given a questionnaire and a few documents that had to be addressed by a lawyer,” explains Harsha.

Funnearn had to hire an attorney, and after a few calls and many emails with Facebook, the page was finally restored.

“It felt like a real achievement once we sorted things out. As one of the first movers in the market, gaining trust was tough. It took some effort to educate users that RMG isn't fraudulent. Customer support was a primary aspect in making sure users didn’t panic,” adds Harsha.

Venturing into uncharted waters

Since childhood, Harsha says it was always clear to her that she was going to take the road less travelled by. She says, family support has played a key role in her success.

“I still see most parents restricting their daughters a lot. But I’m thankful that my parents have given me the freedom to spread my wings and fly as high as I can. Since they don't have a business background, they do get worried sometimes, but they are my pillars of strength,” she says.

Harsha also has some advice for aspiring women entrepreneurs. She says:

“Never doubt yourself. We women usually keep waiting for things to happen, waiting for people to do something or give us something, although we have earned it. Never do this! Just go and grab whatever you have fought for so valiantly.”

Before starting up, she and the other co-founders worked at a Delhi-based design, web, and app-development company. But unlike Ashish and Hardeep, Harsha was never a hardcore gamer. However, she says her role as a software designer equipped her with the knowledge she required to launch Funnearn. Harsha, along with her team of eight, are now working towards making Funnearn the “next big thing.”

Today, Harsha communicates with Funnearn’s female users and is constantly working on innovating newer games that would have a better appeal among them. Based on the feedback received, she says women like to play graphic-oriented games, which has prompted Harsha to roll out games similar to ‘Piano Tiles’ and ‘Flappy Bird’ by the first week of June this year.

What the future holds

According to Harsha, user retention is the key to success, and she plans on innovating the app as much as possible to grow a loyal player base.

“What we usually see is people just burning money on marketing to get users or customers. But eventually, when people don't have a good experience, no matter how much you incentivise your platform, sooner or later they will leave. Our focus is to innovate our platform to make our players stay,” says Harsha.

She also says Funnearn aims to go global either by the end of 2019, or in the beginning of 2020.

Also read: Why 2019 is the year for the online gaming industry