In our quest to identify and share with our community some of the unique stories, we interviewed yet another passionate entrepreneur, Rituraj Behera – Founder at Cympl Studios. His startup is a mobile game development & publishing studio. They ideate, design, develop and publish their own Mobile Game IPs. Let’s read more about Rituraj’s exciting journey, way forward and his advice for others!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Rituraj:
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey, please;
My name is Rituraj Behera and I am Founder @ Cympl Studios, a mobile game development & publishing studio focussed on casual mobile games.
It all started back in 2013 when I was encouraged by my elder brother Nishant Behera to get out of the Family Business of Manufacturing and start something of my own that is both exciting in terms of future potential as well as something that I am passionate about. I loved playing computer games since I was 5 years old, creativity excited me and software development was what I really enjoyed. Therefore, it seemed like a no brainer that time to get into mobile game development & publishing.
Since then I have not looked back! The first 3 years of that journey (2013-2016) went a lot in team building, understanding game development, making a ton of mistakes and truly understanding gaming from a business standpoint.
It was in mid-2016 that we took a completely new direction with a clear market in mind (India) and a strategy to penetrate the market and make a mark for ourselves by first winning at home. We wanted to focus on casual games and started working on a cooking game. When we ended up releasing the cooking game Masala Express, we got mass market acceptance and have reached over 15 Million downloads in that game on Android & iOS.
Why did you choose entrepreneurship over a job?
I guess Entrepreneurship is in my blood 🙂
My father and uncle started their journey with their own company (RSB Industries) which is big into manufacturing and we have grown up seeing them being successful Entrepreneurs. We were always encouraged to follow our passion and work towards creating long-term value in whatever we do.
What gets you out of bed in the morning i.e. what’s your source of motivation?
We @ Cympl LOVE making fun games! Knowing how players feel about our games and how we can improve their experience further gives us the energy to work tirelessly every day.
Our mission is to make games that people love to play for months and years!
What challenges/obstacles did you face in your journey so far?
We faced a lot of challenges on our way till here. When we started back in 2013 the challenges were plenty:
1 – Lack of talent in the gaming industry. Even if we found the right people in terms of skills, they were driven more by service mindset and not by product/passion mindset.
2 – Limited in-house expertise in Game Design & Development
3 – Limited understanding of Gaming from a Business standpoint
We barely could make any progress in the first 3 years of the journey when we had a very small in-house team of 5-10 people even after making multiple mobile game releases.
Post our game release of Masala Express in 2017 the challenges were a lot different:
1 – After getting strong D1 & D7 Retention numbers for the game along with healthy organic traffic scaling content and monetization was a challenge – we were new to F2P games as a service.
2 – Quickly scaling up the team and at the same time ensuring maintaining our game quality & studio culture was also very challenging.
What comes first for you – money or emotions?
Emotions have definitely played a bigger role in my 6 years of working in the gaming industry. Not that money was not important at all but the reason I started the gaming venture was emotional. I had always seen quality games coming out from the west and wondered why India could not produce the same quality in both Design & Execution? I loved games and at that time the mobile game’s craze had just got started, so I decided to venture into my own business and take on the challenge of releasing quality mobile games from India and owning the entire process end to end.
How do you handle the pressure and manage stress?
Let me be very honest and say that I was really bad at managing pressure and stress at the beginning of my entrepreneurial journey. Only through experience in being in multiple challenging situations and working with people of varied personalities I got better every year.
The most important factor that helped me get through all situations no matter how distasteful, was the passion and determination to make great games that match global standards.
What is one strategy that you believe has helped you grow as a person/startup?
Learning can never stop!
Every day I feel that I need to learn so much more to run the company well. That drives me to keep learning and trying new things that could help improve myself and the company.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
I believe there are multiple things that contribute to one’s success, but if I had to list the most important ones they will be the following:
1 – Clear Goal: It’s very important to take all the time in the world to think very deeply about what we want to achieve and why.
Once the Goal is well established then:
2 – Consistent Effort: only when there is consistent effort day after day towards the goal we can achieve success
3 – Co-operation: Nothing can be achieved alone. As Supercell rightly says “The Best Teams Make The Best Games”. Working together in a co-operative endeavour to achieve a common goal is what increases our chances of success
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
For someone just starting out in their Entrepreneurial journey I would honestly like to say that:
Think 10 times before you take that path. It’s a painful journey for most of us, can take years of hard work and still there might not be a success at the end of the road. Do it only and only if you are truly passionate about what you want to do and you genuinely enjoy the journey more than the destination.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, Stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
