Trivandrum game maker eyes new horizons

Like all young entrepreneurs who start their journey with stars in their eyes, Nikhil Chandran also had an ambitious aim as a freshly minted engineer – to launch an e-game that would hit one million downloads.

Together with his college mate Mohammed Rafi, Nikhil founded Tiltlabs and began their quest. Their first game, Buggie Menace, was released in 2014.

But publishing the game merely a year after obtaining his degree in computer science from the Muslim Association College of Engineering brought Nikhil down to earth quickly. The difficulties that the debutants faced in the market were a sharp learning curve for them.

Yet, Buggie Menace triggered a lot of interest among local youngsters, as news about a Kerala company publishing an e-game excited them, and many started writing to Tiltlabs asking about ways to create games.

Nikhil then went around colleges to give lessons about building games for mobile phones. As requests for such lessons mounted, Tiltlabs realised that training courses on game building itself were a vertical they could develop.

A decade later, the firm has created 65 games and started offering courses for youngsters to learn the tricks of the trade. The game maker has also forayed into several sectors like virtual reality, education, movies, media, and entertainment parks.

Tiltlabs’ founders say that with gaming elements being adopted into areas like urban planning and medicine, the sky is the limit for game makers.

Tiltlabs says their focus in the initial years was solely on the gaming sector. “We continued making games with fancy software and grand settings. But revenue remained elusive,” says Nikhil.

The company pulled no punches when it came to game creation. Tiltlabs says they were the first company to import a headset from the UK. Those who used it were impressed by the immersive experience, but the virtual reality games they created based on sports like cricket and boxing didn’t catch the imagination of the market.

Those games were beyond the reach of the mass market at a time when the cost of a gaming PC was as high as 3.5 lakh rupees. It was a tough lesson for the company, but the experience of building it helped them to explore new markets.

The expertise they developed with gaming engine technology and graphic image creations became sought-after in other sectors as well. The automotive sector was one of the first to start incorporating gaming elements into their production and sales, and Tiltlabs began landing contracts with some renowned players in the industry.

The trend of using gaming elements spread to heavy industries like aviation and oil and natural gas production. By 2018, Tiltlabs started getting clients in these areas from different parts of the world, such as the US, the Middle East, and South East Asia.

As different verticals established under Tiltlabs began bringing in steady revenue, core team members like Rafi, who had been helping the company while holding day jobs elsewhere, became full-timers at Tiltlabs.

Nikhil says that was a deliberate plan. “I was taking risks, and I didn't want others to pay if my calculations went wrong. By 2018, I was confident that the company was stable enough to support these people who were getting paid well by their employers.”

As Tiltlabs cemented its position in the AR and VR sector, the company started eyeing new horizons. The experience of making games and 3D animation naturally led them to the celluloid world, and they established a new vertical for virtual production by weaving game engines into film production.

“It was during the Covid time, and I spent a lot of time researching it,” says Nikhil. He says Tiltlabs invested most of the revenue it generated through different verticals into developing the technology for this.

By the time Covid lockdowns started easing, the company was ready with its product and began offering movie producers pre-visualisation services – essentially a digital version of the time-consuming storyboard creation based on the written script.

The company pitched its service to Kerala movie director Jithin Lal, who was preparing his movie Ajayante Randam Moshanam (ARM), and the director loved it. The company then turned a 45-minute script into a 3D version.

“The director could visualise complex shots through a 3D model with this,” says Nikhil. The movie is set to be released in the second half of 2024.

With this experience under their belt, the company started getting work from filmmakers elsewhere, including those in Hollywood. Media companies adopting the technology for various purposes, from weather forecasts to complex visuals, also joined their client list.

The world of entertainment parks was Tiltlabs’ next stop as they created virtual rides for parks like Wonderla. This service then spread to the advertising sector, and Tiltlabs made its first ad for the Wonderla amusement park in Bhubaneswar.

But the core interest of Tiltlabs remains in e-games, especially as the Indian gaming sector is poised for rapid expansion. The gaming market size in India is estimated to be 3.49 billion US dollars in 2024, with expectations to reach 7.24 billion by 2029, according to the market research firm Mordor Intelligence.

Both the Indian and Kerala governments have announced policies to develop the gaming sector, and e-games are now medal events at the Olympics and Asian Games.

Tiltlabs says it wants to generate interest among students who want to learn about building games. They have established a centre to train people in different aspects of game making and have created a platform with MuLearn to offer free training to enthusiasts.

“It is our way of giving back to society. We started as a small unit at the Techno Park in Trivandrum and have now blossomed into a company that has published 65 games. We have also developed different verticals that cover fields like education, medical research, movies, news, and entertainment parks.”

“We now employ 90 people in Trivandrum alone, with bases in different countries. With business from every vertical increasing, our annual revenue now runs into multi-million figures,” says Nikhil, without delving into the specifics.

These claims seem to be backed up by a list of companies listed on their website as clients. Global giants like Honeywell, Siemens, Yokogawa, Quest Global,  and Epic Games are among them.

There is a lot more to come, says Nikhil. Creation of a virtual twin of buildings, factories, and even entire cities is an emerging area that he feels excited about. Authorities will be able to make much more informed decisions with this as well as visualise the effect of unexpected events like flooding and take preventive action in advance, he says.

Companies can showcase the capabilities of their factories to visitors and use the model to train their workers with real-time data.

But Nikhil admits that the budgets needed to create a digital twin of a city could be prohibitive. Yet, to demonstrate the possibilities, Tiltlabs has created a digital replica of Seattle City using available online data.

So, what about the dream he set out to achieve – a game with one million users?

“We achieved that last year,” says Nikhil, a grin of satisfaction spreading across his face. “Of the 65 games we created, a couple of them had more than half a million downloads, while a game called Monster Evolution, published through the French company YSO Corp, crossed a million downloads.”

The next target?

“To create a triple A game that will be a hit globally,” says Nikhil.

A triple-A category is like a big-ticket event that will require a few million to create. Despite such challenges, Indian gaming firms are planning to publish AAA games with local elements in them.

Pune-based Nodding Heads successfully released such a strategy game called Raji: an Ancient Epic in 2023, despite the difficulties the creators faced in generating funds for it. At one point, the company's founder had to sell her apartment.

Yet, Tiltlabs founders are undaunted. A decade ago, as a firm founded by two engineering graduates from Trivandrum aiming to create a game with one million users might have sounded like a bit over-the-top ambition.

But not any longer, as the firm has shown that they are on top of their game.

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