BENGALURU: Bengaluru has innumerable places for people looking to have a good time. But the city has lacked spaces for board games enthusiasts. Now Boarding Cafe, the city’s newest themed cafe that opened recently hopes to change that. Located in JP Nagar, the cafe is a brainchild of the entrepreneur couple Avikant Bhardwaj and Sweekruthi Kaveripatnam.
A former investment banker, Bhardwaj quit his job to pursue a career in teaching. An avid board gamer since childhood, Bhardwaj used his experience to come up with new ways to make learning interesting for his students. “I barely had any friends growing up, because my family moved around the country often. So board games were my friends,” he shares.
“I met my wife while working as a volunteer for Teach for India. And during that time we used to experiment new ways to teach children. When you’re learning straight out of textbooks, it’s no fun. We would gamify lessons, essentially creating games to teach math, science and more,” he shares. During the pandemic, the couple started playing board games to pass time and hosted games for friends.
They soon realised they could probably turn their love for hosting board game parties into a business model. “We did some market research and my wife figured out a business plan and within six months, we brought the cafe to life, ” says Bhardwaj. In addition to board games, there are also puzzles and other brain exercises to keep you occupied.
The cafe has also been designed consciously to make it easier for people to play while enjoying food and drinks. Depending upon the size of your group, customers can choose from a variety of seating options such as ‘loveseats’ – an intimate two-person seating arrangement to the ‘cubby hole’ – designed to accommodate a large number of patrons.
What are some of the popular picks for games? “We have everything from very basic games that can keep toddlers engaged, such as Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza to high-strategy games like Imperium classic, Imperium legends – rarely found in India, Civilization, Settlers of Catan, to name a few,” says Bhardwaj. “We also have a lot of desi games, including Namma Bengaluru, a tile-based city building game. The overarching theme is to building boundaries of different areas under a certain set of rules,” says Bhardwaj.
To ensure that players aren’t overwhelmed by the new games, the cafe also offers a ‘game master’ who explains the rules. “The key roadblock for most people when it comes to trying new games are the rules. Some complex games require you to read a lot even before you can play. We have simplified that process, where we explain the rules in less than 10 minutes, giving just enough information for them to start playing and offering additional support when required,” he explains, adding, “In that time, if the players decide to not want to play, they can stop and pick a different game. They have the flexibility to choose what they want to play and for how long they want to play.”