KOCHI: Kerala is fast becoming a hub for movie-based games development, thanks to the Kochi-based Startup Village incubator where a number of companies set up by young entrepreneurs are into creating promotional apps for the film industry.
In terms of the number of movies it churns out, Kerala’s film industry, dubbed ‘Mollywood, is today the fourth largest in India.
The growing competition means movie producers are constantly on the lookout for new marketing tactics and ways to connect to the audience.
Movie game development in Kerala is picking up pace with the success of game tie-ins in Hollywood and Bollywood; but mostly with the emergence of a new generation of world-class game developers in the state; and the increasing awareness that these apps are an effective tool to reach out to the smartphone owning, tech-savvy young moviegoers in Kerala.
Mollywood had its first movie game ‘Hitit 1983’ in February this year for the film 1983 starring Nivin Pauly.
Interestingly, this application on Android platform was developed by group of youngsters whose start-ups Coppra and Clipclap are being incubated at Startup Village.
Coppra, founded in July last year by a team of engineering graduates, started its journey by developing a mobile game for the cartoon series Minnaminni. “After Hitit, we created a promotional game for the Mammootty-starrer movie Gangster. We are getting a lot of positive enquiries from the film industry after the success of these two projects,” said Faheem Moinudheen, the CEO of Coppra.
The Coppra team includes Aswin K K (COO), Inayath K K, Ajmal Jamal, Kishan Dev, Binshad R , Abhijith and Kapil.
Another Startup Village incubatee Raklin recently developed a game application for the movie Mosayile Kuthira Meenukal dubbed the ‘MKM Game’.
Raklin is a startup venture set up by Akhil K Anil, Rahul A R and Lino Antony K. The game was launched on Facebook and Google Play.
“MKM Game is Raklin’s first product and is the first movie-based game in Mollywood that can be run on multiple platforms,” said Akhil, co-founder of Raklin. “We are getting lot of enquiries from movie producers and discussions are on for new projects. Kerala will be one of the first states in India with 100% smartphone penetration in every home and this is fuelling a startup revolution in the state. In Silicon Valley, startups first capture the San Francisco market and then scale up nationally with funding. We hope to replicate this model here for these young startups,” said Sanjay Vijayakumar, chairman of Startup Village.