PlaySimple: Building a global gaming giant from India

Episode Description

In Episode 5 of Summit Series, Mayank Khanduja (Partner, Elevation Capital) speaks to Siddharth Jain (Co-founder, Playsimple Games) on the journey of building a global gaming giant from India.

Founded in 2014 by former Zynga executives Siddharth Jain, Preeti Reddy, and Suraj Nalin along with former WalmartLabs engineer Siddhanth Jain, PlaySimple operates multiple mobile games in the word gaming genre. Today, it is a leading company globally in the free-to-play gaming space, with over 75 million installs and 2 million daily active users. In July 2021, Playsimple was acquired by the Swedish gaming giant, MTG, in what was one of the biggest gaming exits in the Indian startup ecosystem.

Elevation partnered with PlaySimple in November 2016 when we invested $3.2 Mn as part of a $4 Mn Series A round in the company. The company did not raise any subsequent capital until the acquisition. The journey with PlaySimple has been one of many firsts for Elevation, and is quite contrary to the way venture-funded businesses are usually imagined and built in India. In this episode, Sid uncovers the nuances behind his unconventional journey, how his time at Zynga helped him scale Playsimple, his frameworks for innovation, how he was able to build a culture of analytics and metrics orientation in the business, and more.

Episode Summary

00:24  - Introduction to Playsimple and its phenomenal journey

03:24 -  Learnings from the stint at Zynga and what led to Playsimple

10:00 -  Imitate, iterate, innovate and then invent

13:21 - How Sid thinks about the org structure at a gaming company

18:30 - Instilling the DNA of analytics at Playsimple - why and how?

20:23 - Monetisation at Playsimple and how the company constantly stayed ahead of the market

33:09 - What next for Sid?