SuperMonkeyFun wants to be the pioneer of VR games in India

India is starting to come into its own as a center of game development and a big new market for games. SuperMonkeyFun wants to be on the forefront of that trend by developing games that take people into the new medium of virtual reality.

Above: Jayati Khulbe, cofounder of SuperMonkeyFun

Image Credit: SuperMonkeyFun

The company wants to put India on the map as part of the global VR market, which could be a $30 billion market by 2020, according to Digi-Capital. Of course, India has to get on the map of the game industry itself first, and that has been happening gradually. It has been happening more rapidly than usual because of the global nature of mobile gaming and the rise of app stores that let anyone publish games directly to global audiences. When it comes to gaming and VR these days, the world is flat. So why can’t there be a triple-A VR game company from India?

Atul Bagga, a longtime game industry expert and the former head of Zynga Asia, studied the landscape and believes the current Indian mobile-game market is worth about $200 million in revenue per year, a relatively small number. But he noted it is at an inflection point with market size expected to grow to $3 billion by 2019, driven by growing smartphone penetration and evolution of mobile-payment infrastructure.

Delhi, India-based SuperMonkeyFun was created in 2013 by a couple of techies — Kunal Joshi and Jayati Khulbe — who were new to game development. Joshi had a technical background, and Khulbe was more creative. They started offering end-to-end mobile-game development services for other game and app publishers, including Disney, Big Duck Games, Square Enix, Skyworks Interactive, and Nokia.

“Within a short span of three years, we have been able to bag deals with some of the biggest names of the industry,” Khulbe said in an email to GamesBeat.

The team also started publishing its own games, and it has 10 mobile titles in the Google Play store. More recently, it started working on virtual reality games when others were working on simple VR walkthroughs. Two published titles so far include Silent Home, a horror game, and Halloween Ride, a rollercoaster-like experience in a mine.

These titles aren’t setting the world on fire. But SuperMonkeyFun is learning from them. The company has tried to develop smooth interfaces and experiences so that people don’t get motion sick.

Above: SuperMonkeyFun’s holiday game.

Image Credit: SuperMonkeyFun

Above: Kunal Joshi, cofounder of SuperMonkeyFun.

Image Credit: SuperMonkeyFun

“Not only do we build games for publishers, we are continuously working toward building our own portfolio of VR games,” Khulbe said. “We believe in becoming the triple-A VR studio of India.”

While other companies in India have focused on apps for real estate, cars, education, and tourism, SuperMonkeyFun decided to focus on games. Khulbe said that Indians showed a big surge of interest in VR when Google released the inexpensive Google Cardboard viewers, which replicate the 3D stereoscopic views of VR apps.

“We’re happy to be one of the first developers in India to have worked in the category,” Khulbe said. “The technology is still undiscovered territory when it comes to mobile gaming. It has been gaining popularity in India, but there have been no substantial live games one can see in the Play store by an Indian mobile-game developing studio.”

The company has 15 employees, and it competes with rivals such as Fibrum, Frag, and Luna Games. SuperMonkeyFun is entirely bootstrapped, with no outside funding.

The horror and Halloween games are just a start.

“We intend on building games that are for everyone and not just pertaining to one age group,” Khulbe said.

Above: SuperMonkeyFun’s Silent Home VR game.

Image Credit: Super Monkey Fun