Gameshastra plans another centre in Hyderabad

Game outsource services provider, Gameshastra Solutions, is looking at further expanding its base in the country.

The wholly-owned subsidiary of New York-based Gameshastra Inc is planning to set up a second development centre in Hyderabad, besides substantially scaling up its human resources pool, at an incremental investment of $5 million (approximately Rs 20.5 crore).

Gameshastra opened its first centre in Hyderabad in February this year. The 25,000-sft facility, which employs 160 professionals, focuses on a full range of game development, game art, animation and quality assurance (QA) services for console, PC and online gaming platforms.

"We are scouting for a 1,000-seat leased facility in close proximity to our development centre in Jubilee Hills. We are negotiating with a couple of private equity and venture capital firms to raise funds by the year end, and the new facility would be fully operational by the second quarter of next year," Prakash Ahuja, chief executive officer of Gameshastra, told Business Standard.

Post expansion, he said, the company's headcount in the country would reach 1,000 by the end of 2008.

Stating that the country is slowly emerging as a breeding ground for movie games, he said the company was gearing up to diversify into this area soon.

"We recently signed agreements with two production houses for developing games based on Bollywood characters for console, online and PC platforms. Development of these games are currently on in tow with Hindi script writers. We expect the first game to be released in India by March next year, and the second in six months from then," he said while declining to share more details.

Gameshastra is also planning to bring Guitar Hero, the largest selling game in the US, to India.

Towards this, it is negotiating with the California-based $1.4-billion game publishing group, Activision Publishing Inc, which is the anchor client to Gameshastra's first development centre in Hyderabad.

"We are yet to close the deal with Activision. We hope to launch the Indian version of Guitar Hero in the country by next summer," Ahuja said.

Gameshastra has also signed an agreement with California-based casual developer, Freeze Tag, to create a new PC, web, and Mac game based on Chio Art's classic, Etch A Sketch toy, with possible extension to Xbox Live Arcade and Wi versions.

The company expects its revenues from India to grow six-fold to $6 million (around Rs 24.6 crore) during the currently financial year.