India has a new game studio that aims to make multiple games for both mobile devices and PCs/consoles within the next year: Viaan Studios, founded by Indian film star and serial entrepreneur Shilpa Shetty Kundra alongside her husband Raj Kundra.
What’s most interesting about Viaan is that it seems to have hit the ground running: there’s already a roadmap of game releases on its website, one that starts with the slated release next week of mobile zombie survival game Survival Block and runs through the March 5th, 2018 release of Before It Ends, a survival game for PCs and consoles.
However, it should be noted that while the Mumbai-based studio put out a press release this week proclaiming its existence and its (remarkably definite) release calendar, it’s likely been working for some time on some or all of these projects.
“We plan to target the 150 million mobile gamers in India with high-end, free-to-play games — and we’ll also offer premium titles to the wider international game market,” Raj Kundra stated in the press release. “Developing games in India can play an important role in the growth of a nascent Indian development community — in alignment with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ initiative. We plan to tap into the global game market by releasing new mobile games every quarter, entering partnerships in India, and developing AAA console games for the core market in the next two years.”
Some analysts have posited that the Indian mobile game market is big business, and the “Make in India” initiative Kundra alludes to is a 2014 government effort to secure investment (and create jobs) in sectors of the Indian economy like telecommunications, media and entertainment.