Cricket is not any game in India, it's a religion, a way of life. It is a sport that is played in stadiums as well as every corner of the country. From World Cups to T-20 and the fast-paced IPLs, the craze around cricket matches is unparalleled. Building upon this popularity, a game called HitWicket has risen to great ranks in the global eSports arena. HitWicket, a Made-in-India game, took the love of cricket and gaming and delivered the best of both worlds. Of course, Tim Cook during his visit to India recently enjoyed HitWicket for a reason and we set out to explore more.
HitWicket is a raging success in India and around the world, played by more than 3 million users. Its popularity sees no bounds as it has players from the UK, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, and over 109 other countries.
HitWicket has some big plans to keep players engaged and its formulae are tested and vetted by Apple to gain maximum success on iOS. And with the Indian gaming industry set to grow 3X in value to $3.9 billion by 2025, HitWwicket is on a lucrative path. The company raised $3 million from Prime Venture Partners in November last year as it sets to create a strategy-driven gaming studio and grow features in its multiplayer game.
Kashyap Reddy, CEO & co-founder of HitWicket, spoke to Sami Khan, News Editor, International Business Times at the Apple App Accelerator in Bengaluru about the game's success, what it takes to target a global audience, and Apple's role in it. The text has been slightly edited.
Q. Tell us about HitWicket. What was the inspiration?
Kashyap Reddy: Ever since I was a kid, I was very passionate about designing games. Back in school, when I was 10 years old, every page in my notebook used to be a different game. So not only was I not studying, I used to not let other kids study as well. So that's how my journey with gaming began.
After growing up, I started playing a lot of online games. There was one online game, an online football manager game, where I was actually the number one player from India. And playing that game, and interacting with people from all across the globe, I was super fascinated by what the internet could do and what gaming could do. Obviously growing up in India, cricket is more than just a sport. It's like a religion. And I thought of combining my passion for game design with the huge market potential cricket has, let's make a strategy game for cricket so that we can empower the masses to be more than just a spectator. And HitWicket is a cricket strategy game where you're the owner, coach, and captain of a virtual cricket team.
How does HitWicket put India on a global map of e-sporting?
We've always wanted to be Make In India, for India and the world. And incidentally, two years back, we won the Prime Minister Narendra Modi award for the best game from Made In India. It was an Atmanirbhar App Innovation Challenge and we were the number one game in that contest.
Building the game is step one of our larger vision where we want to build an ecosystem for eSports. Think of it like a virtual IPL, where every city in the world, 200 cities across the globe, will have an official eSports team. And these teams are competing with each other. And there are players who are wanting to be the managers of these teams. There are other users trying to train their players to be recruited into this team.
We don't just want to make a game. We want to build an entire ecosystem for eSports.
What motivates you and the HitWicket team?
Today, we have 3 million users across more than a hundred countries playing our game. We have users from, as far as Argentina to Japan to obviously all the cricket-playing nations who play our game. Twenty percent of our users are women, probably the highest among any cricket game or any sports game for that matter.
People spend more than 2 million minutes on our game playing every day, with an average session of around 45 minutes. We believe that gaming is the best form of active entertainment. We want to crack the market for cricket and be the number-one game for cricket in the world.
We are a team of 62 based in Hyderabad. We handle all data, art, technology, everything in-house. We have people who have actually moved from the United States and come join our team, and now they're helping us build our larger dream. We are a very, super young team and all of us are super hungry to be number one in the world. I think that's what really drives and motivates us.
What was the idea behind including women cricketers in HitWicket?
Women's cricket is picking up across the globe. You see the World Cup happening, you see even women's IPL picking up. They should be represented and that's why my co-founder Keerti has been very vocal about it right from the start. We want to make a game, which is super inclusive. That's why right from the get-go, we included female cricketers as playable characters. You have mixed gender teams inside our game, there's a mixture of male and female cricketers that you can assemble your sport from and they all have great interesting stats. These are some things that people really like that we are very unique and the way we have done it.
What role does Apple play in your journey?
Apple's team has been super supportive. When you're building a game from India where there's not been too many global gaming successes. Having this help from the Apple ecosystem, the team has been giving us insights into what the great numbers look like and what we should aspire. I think it's been super supportive the way they've been hand-holding us, telling us, "Hey, these are all the areas that we need to look at."
It's a tremendous amount of help because this is the kind of knowledge that's been missing in the ecosystem. That's why they bring a lot of value to us. We spend a lot of time interacting with them and they also play our game and give us thoughts on what we need to do to globalize the game and we are not just building for India. That's been super amazing for us.
They've been telling us [about] the latest Apple technologies that are coming out and how they can be used inside our game. And how other games have been doing it globally. We've been trying to incorporate those into our game as well.
