What if the cure for ‘just chilling’ wasn’t another streaming app, but a room full of sensors, lights, and nine different games designed to make you sweat? That’s the bet Himanshu Lalwani and co-founder Ashik Mehata placed with GameStorii, India’s biggest sensor-based gaming arena and Hyderabad’s first standalone gaming space, located at Raidurg. Their goal wasn’t just entertainment, it was pulling people out of their homes and back toward each other.
CE interacts with Himanshu on what sets GameStorii apart from a trampoline park or a typical gaming zone, and he doesn’t hesitate: “You go to a trampoline park or arcade gaming zones, you usually see the kids playing and the parents sitting idle. Here at GameStorii, we have customers who are actively playing along with their grandparents and parents. GameStorii is a place where age just actually becomes another number.”
The arena isn’t only about the games themselves. A cafeteria on site doubles as a private lounge, available for more intimate get-togethers, and the space has already hosted everything from kitty parties and birthdays to friend reunions and corporate events.
According to him, the physical, high-energy format wasn’t a gimmick — it was a response to a culture drifting toward isolation. “In a world moving more towards just sitting around and chilling — Netflix and chill, play games on your phones — in a world where people were just stuck between school, work and home, we wanted to pull people back out of their home,” he says. The goal, as he puts it, was to give people a ‘reason’ to meet their friends, families and forgotten cousins again.
That same philosophy shows up in the arena’s tagline, ‘Play. Compete. Sweat. Repeat.’ He says the fitness angle is more than marketing — it’s baked into the design. “In a world where people can’t leave their phones out of their sight for a few seconds, we are proud to say that when people come to our arena, they forget everything,” he expresses. Most visitors leave their phones in lockers entirely by choice. “The ones that take it into the arena with them leave it unanswered when they get calls because they are completely immersed in the little world GameStorii has created,” he notes.
The decision to launch in Hyderabad was deliberate. “Hyderabad today is the most growing city in India. It’s turning into a global IT powerhouse and major pharma and biotech hub,” he highlights. Combined with the fact that Hyderabad is home turf for the founders, the choice was made itself. He gushes, “This was the major reason, and Hyderabad is our hometown, so it’s easier for us to operate from here and then expand to Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi and the rest of India.”
Referencing the recent wave of pickleball’s popularity, he says people are now looking for something beyond clubbing or house parties — something ‘more energetic and challenging’ to explore. The team is even planning an anonymous-player option, letting solo visitors book a slot and get matched with other new people looking to connect.
Running the arena day-to-day, he adds, “It is a fun but a different ballgame altogether, the games may be built almost to perfection, but the team is constantly troubleshooting technical issues and bugs that could interrupt gameplay. There’s also the challenge of serving an unusually wide age range, from three-year-olds to sixty-year-olds, which means keeping the concept relevant across generations.”
Asked which game gets the most love from customers, he says it’s genuinely hard to pick a single favourite — feedback varies by visitor — but two stand out consistently: Mission Impossible and Octopus.
In the end, Himanshu circles back to what keeps him and Ashik going. “Games and electronics have been our passion, and mixing the two and making something like this go live gives us immense pleasure. The energy of the customers and their smiling faces when they come out from the arena gives us tremendous joy and fills us up with energy to keep working,” he concludes.