Shailesh Prabhu, Founder, Yellow Monkey Studios Pvt. Ltd.

Yellow Monkey Studios Pvt. Ltd., is a game development studio, based in Mumbai. Currently they are making Finger Footie a game based on football for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch soon to hit the App Store along with the Football World Cup 2010.

Shailesh has worked on high profile titles such as; I-Play’s Maria Sharapova Tennis, Laurel and Hardy in Pie Wars 3D, Kickshot Pool 3D, Archie in Tomato Pulp Fiction 3D, Bowling Babes 3D and many more. He also set-up and lead the game development team at Nazara technologies which was responsible for researching cutting edge 3D mobile game technology and delivering games on the same for the global market. Shailesh recently won the International Young Interactive Entrepreneur 2008 India award (IYIE 2008).

To follow Young Creative Entrepreneur Awards on Facebook click here . To find out more about Young Interactive Entrepreneur Award click here

Shailesh was also a finalist of a year-long entrepreneurship program organized by the British Council and the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIM-B), called Creative Future 2007 program. It was a program to identify the top entrepreneurs from the creative sectors in India. All finalists attended a very unique 3 week long course at the IIM-B (one of the top B-schools in the world) catered for management in the creative industries. 

YourStory spoke to Shailesh on his venture and game development in India.

How did you get into game development ?

I am a computer engineer from Mumbai University. As a hobby I liked playing games and coming up with different game ideas. I wanted turn this hobby into my profession and took up a job in a game development fir

m. After that I moved to Dhruva in Bangalore where I worked as a game designer. Later I setup the game development team at Nazara Interactive and that is what me realize that I was capable of setting up and running my own studio and decided to startup.

For people who would want to get into game development as a career, is it important to be a programming buff to get into game development?

Not necessarily. I am not a hands on programming, it helps me structures the games and I take care of the design and creative aspect of the game development. So as long as you have a good technical team and basic understanding of the technologies behind it you do not have to have a technical programming background to get into game development as a career.

What was the idea behind the name “Yellow Monkey Studios “?

We needed a good name, that would stick in peoples heads. I think monkeys are really cool and thought this would be a good fun name for the venture and it clicked.

Tell us about the games you have developed so far.

We work on a healthy mix of client games and original I.P. We started off by developing a game demo on the Nintendo DS, which we were pitching to publishers abroad, but it has been difficult to try and convince publishers of an Indie Indian studio. Around that time Apple App store started off and we thought that a platform where developers get to publish their own content was perfect for us. And since then we have been quite active on the Apple handhelds. We recently launched our football game, Finger Footie for iPads and iPhones/iPod Touches. Its a casual and intuitive football game that is being received well.

How do see the market for games catering to the Indian audience?

The Indian market for markets is at a very nascent stage. We do not have the critical mass necessary to make games specifically for the Indian audience although it is growing phenomenally. The easy availability of development APIs and app stores has enabled Indian game developers to reach out to a global

audience there by cashing in on the huge demand for games in the western and Asian markets. There is great talent in India and there are many opportunities available now.

How was your experience International Young Interactive Entrepreneur 2008 India Award?

It was a great experience. I got to meet people from various backgrounds in the UK representing different countries. It helped me a lot in terms of networking and getting new clients and partners. The Creative Future 2007 program that British Council had organized was extremely helpful. This helped me a lot in shaping up Yellow Monkey Studios.

What are your future plans when it comes to Yellow Monkey Studios?

We have upgrades coming up for our current games and couple of games in the pipeline. We are planning to scale up our business and cater to many more clients.

YourStory wishes Yellow Monkey Studios and Shailesh all the very best in their endeavor to emerge as a leading player in the game development space.