Dhruv Sharma: Hey there, listeners. It's Monday, October 26. We're getting closer and closer to Diwali. This is stream number one five four. And today, we're talking with a gaming entrepreneur. His name is Abhishek. He's right now based in London, and he's gonna be joining us in just a second. Abhishek, welcome to The Offline Network.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Hi, Drew. Pleasure pleasure to get connected. I also... Pleasure to meet you guys.

Utsav Somani: Hi. You on the show.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): And thanks for having me here.

Dhruv Sharma: Our pleasure. Abhishek, let's introduce the company to people who don't know about it just yet. What is Funcell Games, and tell us more about the journey.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Yeah. So through Funcell Games, actually, I'm the I'm Ebi. I'm the CEO and the founder of Funcell Games. We started in 2060. My journey started, before it. I made my first game in two thousand nine nine. But we have been making games for more than ten years now, and we have made hundreds of games, seen hundreds of failures, more than that. And in 2019, we had our first hit. The game was world number one across all the charts, US, Europe. Then there was nothing stopping us. We continued making successful games, but we were always a studio. So we were making games, but it was being published by the big publishers who were marketing the game. And we never came into the limelight because we made the game, but it was finally their product. So it's like you make a movie and then you give it to a publisher who... And they don't even know who's the director. So, basically, we were a studio till 2025. Mhmm. And we we are the only studio in the world who has got around 25 published games, more than 25, actually. By publishing, you mean the game goes into big marketing budgets and then scale. Then last year, we decided to shift into publishing so that we become, you know, a publishing powerhouse for India because that is what India lacks at the current moment. And that is the journey of Funcell Games. We have across 400,000,000 downloads across all our games, and now we are doing the publishing our own... On our own.

Utsav Somani: Tell us about the economics. Like, publishing versus game studio versus self publishing. Like, I mean, what are the different economics?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Yeah. Self publishing. So there are two types of stuff. There are some publishers who only takes games from others. They don't develop games. They just take games from others and use their funds to market the game and make it scalable, bring it to the audience. Then there are studios who just make games and give it to the publishers, what we were for ten years. And then there are self publishing studios who make their games also. And if they have the finances, they publish the game on their own. So we want to create a fourth category where we want to become a self publishing studio also as well as we are open to receiving others' games and market it. But to publish a game, you need, you know, user acquisition knowledge, which we have gained over the last ten years, and we were ready to launch ourselves as publishers.

Dhruv Sharma: Fantastic. I'm wondering, Abhishek, for the for the average studio, does your strike rate improve over time? In other words, do you have to always keep making a lot of games for them to... For some of them to become runaway successes?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): It's always like you said, Drew, in our... In the... We have a proverb where you have to dig the well and take out water every day. Yeah. All the fifteen years of experience is worth zero. You have to get up again and work again with the same vigor every day. Nothing matters. Past is past....

Utsav Somani: Team decide these trends? Like, I mean, of course, apart from there not being actual signs which can carry forward to future games. But how does the team pick on what trending... Like, how do you predict what's gonna work in six months, twelve months, and what is the shelf life of a game?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): It was very difficult before before the AI, you know, influX. And now it's easy. You just ask ChatGPT. Give us the trend. Connect it to various plug ins using you... Connect it to YouTube, TikTok, and they'll give you the trends. It's... It finally, you know, comes down to yourself. What will give you the utmost pleasure, the genre? Although, 90% of, revenue in mobile industry comes from puzzle games. But it depends on you. What you want to make, you can make make now.

Utsav Somani: Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: And, Abhishek, correct me if I'm wrong, but you've gotten where you have without taking any outside money. No no venture dollars.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): So as I told you, before I'm moving into gaming, I had a successful textile business, which is still run amazingly by my brothers. So I had bought in money from my textile business to run the gaming business. I paid them back back when my first game was hit. So, yeah, we are completely bootstrapped.

Dhruv Sharma: But may...

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Because we had so much success. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. Which is a great thing. But I guess that the question that would be relevant to, our listeners would be, like, what kind of financial discipline does it take, you know, when you're, running on, you know, hard earned money and and you can't afford to get things wrong, but you still need to experiment. So talk to us about that.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): It's very, very tough answer, Dhruv. The answer is you you you have to be ready to, you know, go down the drain and go to the lowest level if if if you want to risk. You have to risk it all. Luckily, I had the finances to carry forward, but any any person listening to this who who doesn't have the finances but still want to... Wants to make a bigger game and, you know, make it big in the industry, It's it's a tough job, but there are people like us where we we we want to, you know, portray ourselves as a publisher, where we help those studios by financing them if we see caliber in the game. So that is where India lacks. We don't have a single publishing house in the country where you can call small studios and tell them, show your game to me, and I'll help you fund it. I'll help you make it bigger. And that is where the funds are required. And that is where, you know, countries like Turkey, Vietnam. You won't believe Turkey is the number one country in the world in terms of mobile gaming, in terms of downloads, user acquisition, everything. Turkey, France, UK. America still, you know, in a bigger picture, console games, Steam games. But, yeah, it's in Europe, but India lacks this. We need publishing houses. That's why when we made games, we had to go to those people. We had to go to the Voodoo, the SuperSonics, the the Ubisoft to publish our games because we had no idea, and we had no funds. You need amazing, huge amount of funds to publish a game.

Utsav Somani: Tell us about your big successes. Idle Human, and I'm reading some names. Yeah. Idle Human, Ideal World, MomLife Simulator, DogLife Simulator.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Yeah. So... That's awesome.... A small... Yeah. I'll I'll tell you in a small brief what happened was that since I started making games in 2009, I I kept on making games using developers. 2016, we formed Funcell Games. I had a group of developers by that time, and I continued making games. For three and a half years, we made around 200 to 300 games, all failed. And then we we were almost on the verge of closing. So, you know, there was one fine day when, me and Ankit, very senior developer that time, he told me that, it's not making sense. Let's close it. We we we... You you are burning your textile money. How long will you continue doing so? And we had one game in the shelf, which we we had no work. So we thought, let's finish that game. It was called Idle World, and we decided to finish it on our own, just two of us. And we launched it, and, we just tested it with the publisher there, and the numbers were amazing. So immediately, we got a reply from the publisher that we want to publish. That was a big deal for us. So it was the first game published, Idle World, and it was ranked top 20 in the world. And then taking that same formula, we decided...

Utsav Somani: And these are typically, like, I mean, paper, postage, or......

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Clicker games.

Utsav Somani: All ad.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): No. So, so so a... By 2019, the mobile mobile industry had completely changed to free to play. 99... 98% of the games, are free to play. So you get revenue mainly from the ads shown in your game. So other games want to publish their games, promote their games. They show their games ads in your games, and we get paid for their ads to be showed. It's just like a TV serial where another TV serial shows their ads in your game, and they pay you. So, to continue, we we we had a success with Idle World, and we used the same formula. And I'm a big fan of, you know, Discovery Channel. And that time, I used to watch, watch a lot of those. So then I... One day, I was watching how, you know, a child becomes, grows inside a fetus and becomes from a fetus to a whole child. And I thought, why not make it into a game? I will click a game. So that was a unique idea, and it took the world by storm. It was the number one game and app, you know, above Facebook, above everything for one month nonstop. So we made millions with that game. And then the same idea, I replicated with human work.... Give us a number? Till now, I think it has got 100,000,000. Around 80 to 100,000,000 downloads till the... It's still generating revenue for us.

Utsav Somani: Okay. I'll fix it. Wanna put a number to it?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): We made around three... So we got only 50% of the profit share. 50% was kept by the publisher. So that was around $3,000,000 that year Wow. In 2019. Yeah. And then COVID hit. Then we had to change our strategy. Idle games were not working. Games which were working were, you know, anyone can play because, there was a new influx of users who did not play a mobile game before. So we had to completely change our strategy. We shifted to narrative gaming. We made some amazing successful narrative games, which were usually mainly made by Shorri, my nephew. And they were, again, huge successes. And, this year, we launched Pawn to Don, our, you know, first interactive animated narrative game, and that was under Funcell publishing. And it's it's already got around 10,000,000 downloads. We are we are doing a 1,000,000 revenue in that game at current pace, and we plan to increase much more.

Dhruv Sharma: Abhishek, you guys have now set your eyes on becoming a homegrown publisher out of India. I'd like us to go one level deeper on what that would unlock for, you know, Indian studios and Indian game developers and, also, the domestic capital... Domestic market. I'm sorry. How many publishers do you think it can absorb at this point? How many different publishing houses, different publishing?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): You mean different studios? Both, I guess.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. Publishers as well as studios.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): So as... At current, scenario in India, there is no publisher in India. Yeah. If you are a small studio in India and you want... You have made a game and you want to promote it or you want to show the world that you have made the game, you you have no one to go to. You will go to Sey Games. You'll go to Voodoo. You'll go to Homa Games. I don't want to name anyone, but I have seen five or six studios in India, falling prey to... I... Again, no names, but falling prey to these publishers where they just signed a contract. They were happy to sign a contract with them. Mhmm. And they had to sell their game for, say, 200,000, $300,000, and the game is making tens of millions of revenue now. But, that is that is the, you know, thing I want to change with these small Indian studios who are amazing. The talent in India, the studios in India, they make games which are, you know, capable of make... Being world number one, like, attack whole. It was world number one for one year, the most downloaded game in 2024. It was made by an Indian studio, but it was published by Homa Games. No one knows that studio. Homa Games is known. I want to, you know, remove that. We want the studio to come up. We want to support them. We want to teach them user acquisition. We don't know user acquisition in India. It's a completely different ballgame. And today, if you don't know user acquisition, you cannot launch a game. You can make the best game in the world. User acquisition is 80% of the knowledge. How is it changing?... Finances, of course.

Dhruv Sharma: How is

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): it change?

Dhruv Sharma: How is user acquisition changed over the years?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): It's become a money game, Dhruv. It's completely... If you have the money... What is going on in Turkey? I went to Moby Dickham this time, and I was shocked. Like, if you have a good game Yeah. Then it's just a matter of how much money you can put. They just see the returns. There should be more than the interest rate. And as long as more, of course, it will be more. You just pump in more money, get more downloads, get more users. A small studio cannot even imagine.

Utsav Somani: The game is good. Like, I mean, I think the retention and all those stuff.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): You know? But just tell that that is the base.... Dollars.

Utsav Somani: But what other muscle did you have to build to... I mean, apart from just capital to build a successful publishing house yourself?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Capital is secondary. See, capital, you can always get. You can take bank loans. Apart from capital, the main thing is user acquisition knowledge. You have to first, you know, build connections with all these big networks like AppLovin, like Mintegren, like Moloco, like Liftoff, like Unity Ads. You have to build connections, get credit lines, then you have to understand the knowledge of user acquisition. You have to understand how to acquire users, which campaigns to run, whether it's a day seven ROAS, day 28 ROAS, hybrid campaign, in app campaign. It... It's it's technical. Although now with with cloud, I'm seeing that it's helping there and it's it's taking over. It's it's telling us what to do. So things are changing now in the last three weeks. But before this user equation was a whole different ballgame. You need a lot of learnings, which we have been doing for ten years. But by, by by... It was done by others. We were just watching them do it. Now we are doing it ourselves.

Dhruv Sharma: Classic. So what we're hearing is it's a combination of the right amount of capital, you know, prop knowledge when it comes to user acquisition, and then just, you know, fair, equitable revenue sharing deals with, between the publishers and the studios. Of course. Studios have a real shot. Great.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Fair is the amazing word you use, Dhruv. Fair fair is very important. The current publishers are not not fair. They are not fair.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. I mean, if if you... As a studio, you produce a steeper head hit and, you know, you you walk away, too soon and don't get to capture any of the value you have created, then it's certainly

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): not there

Utsav Somani: in your favor.

Dhruv Sharma: So speaking of AI, how is AI bring... Bringing the production costs, down? Abhishek, and, how's the end product evolving? By the way, I have to tell you, my questions with gaming are always super... I mean, I'm not much of a gamer myself, but I I I I believe you were telling us you're a big gamer, so you should also tell us your favorite games and everything.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Mhmm. Well, my favorite game is Clash Royale, by Supercell. I really love it. I still play one and a half, two hours a day. Oh, so is there any...

Utsav Somani: Your company Funcell, because you love the game?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's... You're the first person to, catch this, but, yeah, I mean, fun sell after Supercell. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: For what? Have you, I mean, have you prebooked, GTA 6 or Call of Duty Modern Warfare four, which

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): is coming up for you? I I I don't play console yet. But, see, now I have to be on mobile. I don't play console. I used to play GTA 4 ten years back, but now my son......

Utsav Somani: Inspiration. Where do you go for inspiration on what games to build? It's...

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): I watch TV. I watch TV. Because if you look at games, then you'll end up copying someone. So you have to watch, you know, different channels, knowledgeable channels to find out, get inspired, usually. Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: I have to ask you guys if one has never played Call of Duty or GT in their life, can you just, I don't know, parachute it and play whatever, c o d four? Is it gonna be five? I don't know. GTA 6? Can you...

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): I think, yeah, it is. But GTA 6 is launching in November. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: It's...... Play.... November 19. Apparently, they're saying that, it's gonna take a hit of 1,000,000,000, to the GDP on that day because of, like, some productivity thing which will go down because people have already filed for leads in

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): their company.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Yeah.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): I I admire. I admire. It's the biggest event in the nation....

Utsav Somani: For that game is just insane. Like, I mean, I read about the security protocol that they follow at Rockstar Games

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Yeah.

Utsav Somani: Where even during smoke breaks, employees would track... Like, I mean, whole... I mean, they are, like, proper policed, proper policed, to secure their camps.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): They're they're big. It will be the biggest gaming... Yeah.

Utsav Somani: I mean, they have a GCC in India also. Right? Rockstar Games?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Yeah. Of course. Yeah. They have a lot of outsourcing had done for India. Lot of, you know, the... Not the main character animations, but all the other animations are being done in India. So GTA six will be the biggest gaming event in the history of the world.

Dhruv Sharma: This sounds like the biggest entertainment event. I don't think the Super Bowl, the cricket

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): will be you can you can call it.... Any... Yeah. Oh, because it's continuous.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. They're spending $23,000,000,000 just to make this game. Right?

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Around that.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Insane. It's big. It's big.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): But, yeah, coming back to your question on AI too, things are changing very fast. Although these big big companies have denied that they will not use AI for now, like, they'll stay away, but they cannot stay away. What I'm seeing, a full game being developed, which took around one year for a team of 15 to 20 people, is now being done in a week by one person. If you give him four computers and if you tell that person what you want, then, a game which took one year to make with 20 people will be made in one week by one person. So what has happened in the last month, Apple has stopped, reviewing games because they they have to change their strategy. Because every one second, a game is being uploaded on App Store, and 10 games are being uploaded in the Google Play Store every second. Now you can multiply that number, and there might be a million games in a month being uploaded. How will a new game being find out? Who will find out that new game which you have made?

Dhruv Sharma: Neil and his dad now.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Yeah. It's bigger than that.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Oh.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): So that's the biggest problem, discovery. What's next to you?... Why... Yeah. So we we want to build a, you know, a a consortium of games like Pawn to Don where we cross promote each other. Because I told you, everything is user acquisition now. The cost of user acquisition will grow so high that you'll not be able to acquire profitably. So we are building a a a complement of similar games where we can cross promote each other and this... The other game gets used... Acquired for free, and you'll be getting the best users. So if I made a game, narrative game, and I make one more narrative game, and I then cross some of the other narrative game in the first game, I get the users for the other game for free instead of $8 or $9. So, yeah, our main market is US tier one countries still now. So, yeah, that's very, very difficult to acquire users cheap.

Dhruv Sharma: And you were telling

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): us you......

Utsav Somani: Kind of clothing one?

Dhruv Sharma: I do have one, which is, Abhishek, you've relocated to The UK. UK. You're in London now. And, you told us that's naturally because there's an entire ecosystem around which, you know, around Funcell Games. Tell us more about what that ecosystem is like and how long before we can actually have something similar in India for India as well.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): So... Yeah. Moving to UK, the decision was because, just to give you an example, in two years, I have attended around 45 to 50 conferences, gaming conferences. Before that, my total was four. So it's, like, lifetime of four, and in two years, 50. Now when you go to these conferences, you end up meeting people whom you've never even known. So you get to learn so much from them, and that is how we we were able to shift from a studio to a publisher. So we shifted only last year, January. And I moved to UK last... To last year, January. So, basically, in two years... In one year time, I built a connection with all these people, the publishers, to understand, to build a network, how does UA work? Because we had seen it being done, but it was done by the publisher who could not... Who never disclosed the full, you know, success strategy to us. And when I went around India finding user acquisition talent, there was none. And still, there's none. India doesn't have a company which can publish a game with proper user acquisition, except a few who are making selective games. I don't want to give names, but they just make one game. And, they are mainly not for the tier one countries. So the user acquisition which they do is targeting the India region and the MENA region. So when you want to target US and tier one countries, you have to understand user equation. And that is how we were able to, you know, shift into, becoming a publisher.

Utsav Somani: Awesome. Abhishek, this was fun. Thank you so much for coming on TON on this Monday.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Thanks. So thanks a lot. Pleasure is all mine. Thanks,.

Utsav Somani: The best.

Dhruv Sharma: All the best.

Abhishek Malpani (Funcell Games): Thank you so much. Bye.

Utsav Somani: So let's talk a little bit about what's happening on Twitter. Actually, once, he was trending on, X. I mean, all the VCs are also having a field day. I think everyone's triggered by the kind of post, that he's... Of course, he's come out with this article where he says that why are Indian VCs so afraid to take risk and make money? Everyone's... The background

Dhruv Sharma: of this is he he came to India and spent time with some 15 companies, and and therefore, he now has a point of view on what's really going on over here. It's obviously his point of view. And then once he was back home, he's put out a tweet, which, came a few days after another one that was put out by a friend and Moe who's been on the show before. Yeah. So the two...

Utsav Somani: In a decade, we'll realize most of the deep tech is grift is a grift. Quick services plus quick commerce companies are what drives more for the economy. Yeah. I mean, hard to have an opinion on this. I really haven't read too much about this, but I I mean, both of them are right in their own ways. Like, I think it's a very nuanced topic. Like, I mean, quick commerce, all of this stuff drives employment in the short term. There are, of course, downsides to what they do by digitizing demand and cheap labor also. But pros and cons to each, but, I mean, Ashley Vance speaking with 15 companies, doing some interviews. He's called out Lockheed Groom as well and, I think somebody from, Emergent Ventures as well. Shruti from Emergent Ventures India. So they have single handedly asked for him, driven a whole bunch of investments and movement in the deep tech world. Yeah. They've... A bunch of companies that we've had on the show also, Airbound and many others. Old Carbon also is them. So hard to have opinion on this, but, I mean, I think... See, it depends on where the wind is going. Right? I think in the ecosystem, I think everything goes through phases. Like, in India, we've just literally... I think the startup ecosystem is not even two decades old compared with US where they've had Apple, Intel, everyone since the beginning. They've had capital. They've had research via Stanford and all their, institutes as well that has been commercialized really well early on. So that flowed into, like, supporting the next gen of founders and having more risk capital. Capital also chases ambition and vice versa. I think it's a vicious cycle where, now we're gonna see companies like Somat to go public, and then Deepinder is taking bets with Elegy Aerospace, Temple, and many others. Right? We've had Neeraj on the show as well who did Coinbase, CoinDCX, and now he's doing Astrobase. So people are gonna take moonshot bets as well. And I think... I mean, of course, he might have a point of view which is valid today, but I think times do change, and people will put in the work to make an ecosystem work. Everyone's had a opinion on this. He's bullish on commercial space in India and many other opportunities. And, of course, he's written the Elon Musk biography, so I guess, he does have a point of view on the space economy globally. But this was funny.

Dhruv Sharma: He does. I I think what I'd say on this is if you take a step back... I mean, it's nice to have these debates on Twitter for sure. But, I mean, even the people triggering these debates know that they're shallow at best at at some level. Is there gonna be, like, this hard pivot from protein to deep tech at this point? Is there short term optimism? Absolutely. Yes. Will some people burn their fingers? Also, yes. But will we have to take risks along the way? Also, yes. And I don't think DeepTech is a VC project in any case. I think this is too important and consequential for us, and the true results of this are gonna show ten, twenty years down the line for this to just be left to a bunch of capital allocators. Right? I mean, who's going to build the entire ecosystem around this? We have CSR laws that encourage, in fact, you know, almost forced companies to spend 2% of corporate profits and corporate social responsibility. There's no such equivalent for r and d. Who's gonna fund r and d? Right? Would... How will LPs have a reckoning and not be just focused on returns, but true value creation in the deep tech ecosystem? How will we not just retain talent talent, but also bring back some of our best people who don't work here anymore? So I think there's just a lot to it. How will government guarantee demand in the early years? There's... I think there's a lot to go into this, but we do promise our listeners that we will be back with a more nuanced point of view after having really thought this through, and we'll invite people who are on either side of the debate and who actually have something valuable to say on this and bring you more. What is this,?

Utsav Somani: Yeah. Twitter went viral, Osof. So I thought, like, let's share this. So everyone's having a field day. Like, everyone loves hating on VCs, right, generally, for some right reasons, some wrong reasons, but, this is a chart that went viral on Reddit, where they've unbothered, high impact, why do they exist, lapper. What's a lapper?

Dhruv Sharma: Is it a bird?

Utsav Somani: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. So... Yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: Interesting. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: It's creative. Yeah. I mean I mean, startup ecosystem in general, I think it's a lot of attention, more attention than sometimes it deserves to be on... Be honest, on Twitter. I've always said that.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah. Yeah.

Utsav Somani: Yep. So I think people do have a lot of time and point of views, on this, topic and ecosystem. Yes. We'll keep bringing you all of this, in real time. Thank you so much for tuning in. Have a wonderful week ahead. We will see you on Wednesday at 04:00. Bye bye.

Dhruv Sharma: Excellent.