• StartUps

For years, the only means of playing a game on the computer has been through the keyboard and mouse. While gadgets like Nintendo Wii have changed the gaming scene, not much progress has been made in the PC game domain. But recently, a Delhi-based startup, iMo Controller, decided to bring a similar experience to all PC games, thanks to the iPhone and iPod Touch’s accelerometer.

A TechCrunch winner, iMo was revolutionary in its concept. While it brought all the fun associated with controllers that you find on consoles, it did away with bulky and cumbersome devices like a joystick.

The brainchild of Himanshu Baweja, a graduate of IIT Delhi, iMO was formed when he teamed up with two friends while working in a startup. “After IIT, I had joined a senior who was starting a news recommendation system company in 2005. But by February 2009 I had gathered enough money to start up. I decided to quit my job in February 2009,” says Baweja.

He keenly observed the iPhone and tried to incorporate the idea that one could use the iPhone as a controller on a PC. “This was an idea that struck me once and I built the app over the weekend without thinking if this was a business I would like to get into,” he says.

Baweja loves to innovate and build new things with fresh ideas. Once made, the controller was a hit and his friends and everyone around him approved of the product. “We began working on this and put a halt to all other ideas that were in my mind. In June 2010, we officially launched the company and, by September 2010, the company began working full time,” says Baweja.

Things, however, soon became tough for the company. Among the challenges it faced initially was that of finding skilled people. “I went to various colleges hunting for suitable employees but it was really difficult,” says Baweja.

Things never improved for the company. While it is one thing to have a great product, it is an entirely different story to convert it into a business. “To kickstart a startup company, one needs to commit five years to it. That is something we did not follow, and that is why it did not work out. My partner and I are into gaming, as in we play a lot of games, but we do not come from a gaming background. We realized that we were not ready to give five years to it. Since we did not come from a gaming background, we knew that this was something which we could not do in the long term. Moreover, we constantly need to be aware of the new ideas to upgrade each product in gaming,” says Baweja.

For the young entrepreneur, a couple of things went wrong. The winding up process of iMo is on and Baweja says in India, gaming has still not gained popularity. “We were serving the U.S. market based out of India but one should serve the U.S. market by living there, and the same goes for the Indian market. People are not willing to pay for gaming here and we knew we won’t be able to sell it here. The biggest mistake we made was that when in September we had decided to pursue gaming, we simply should have moved to the U.S.,” says Baweja.

While each of the three put in Rs.3 lakh as initial investment, they have more or less recovered that amount. “If I had a choice to do things differently, I would have first left for the U.S. We should have hired employees from a gaming background and calculated the amount spent on each part and then made a strategy to recover it all back. For instance, I could have hired someone in the U.S. or in Ukraine to check if my process of gaming and graphics was right. They probably would have charged me three or four times more, but I spent so much time finding the right graphics designer in India. This was a wastage of time, whereas I could have got the work done with a little more expenditure in the right time if I had just looked outside the country,” says Baweja.

He says he is not disappointed that things did not work out the way he had planned as the entire process was a learning experience with no regrets. “Everything happens for a reason; I will be joining Facebook soon,” says Baweja.

However, he is sure he will someday start something again. “I will consider all the pros and cons first. I will check if I am willing to put in five years of my time into it,” says Baweja.

At 27, Baweja says he has built a network of helpful people in India and the U.S. while pursuing his startup and his family has been very supportive. “In India, most families do not believe in startups. They usually like to see their children joining big companies but mine were very helpful and always believed in me,” says Baweja.

©Entrepreneur September 2011

Tags:
entrepreneur, Gaming, Himanshu Baweja, iMO, iMO controller, PC gaming