Saurabh Aggarwal belongs to a very educated family of Master’s and Ph.D degree holders. His Father did his Past graduation in electronics from US in 1969 whereas his grandfather was a Ph.D and professor at Ramjas Collage, NewDelhi. Saurabh’s mother with an MBA from FMS is not far behind in the list.

Saurabh has 13 year experience in entrepreneurial led one event to another and took him to the top of Indian gaming app Market? Nothing happens by chance and concerted efforts feature as the most part of Saurabh’s journey as well. Octro was founded in 2006, based in Noida and is today pegged to be the number one mobile gaming company in India with two of its games, Teen Patti and Rummy, among the top 5 games in Multiple categories on Google Play Store. Octro raised $15M in series A funding last Year from Sequoia Capital.

Here’s how Saurabh set up mobile gaming company Octro.

About a year into his first Job, Saurabh purchased new smartphone which was new in the market. It was built on Palm OS (operating system) and he really liked the future with that product. He says,

“We found shortcomings in it and started building hacks. One of the hacks that we built- me and my co-founder for me and my co-founder for previous company- it was very well received within the social users at that time. And surprisingly, we woke up with bunch of cash.”

It was then, Saurabh started making more hacks to eventually graduate to a full product. During the course of time, he had built a full product which had instant messaging-BB, AOL, Yahoo messenger- all on a single app. All things were available on Palm OS and later on Symbian. Saurabh thinks that he become an entrepreneur by chance. Since then, he has been entrepreneur last 14 years now.

Story behind Octra and Teen Patti

If you are playing ‘Teen patti’ on your Android an ios, you are one of the 12 million users who download the game. Saurabh Aggarwal is a founder of Octra. Octra is 9 year old, the maker of the game. Octra started after he sold his first company. Octra is purely gaming company.

In first Six years, Octra doing VOIP (voice over IP), which got them some OEMs and some direct consumer customers. The team had built a communication product for almost every platform- for Windows phone, Symbian. Saurabh says.

We were in an industry where it was very hard to monetize initially and we got tired trying to make mark in that industry so we pivoted into gaming. There were very few companies which were doing well in that field. So we were looking at businesses that could have some positive return back in near future and we focused on gaming because more than 90% of all top grossed apps on all app stores are games.

Saurabh and his team brought all communication expertise in order to leverage it. The intention was to leverage all the software’s and platforms that they have built over the last six years which supported VoIP (and can support video calling in real time) in the next game so the company started with multiplayer games.

octro Teen patti Game Google Play store

You would have seen in our games in the past which have topped the charts and we have had 12 million downloads of Teen patti on Google Play store. We are only Indian gaming company to have achieved that feat.

Saurabh was not a gamer and always think that as a non gamer. He made sure that the UI is kept simple and uncluttered. The first version of teen patti is very simple just a play now button. Once the user logged in and clicked on that button and game is started directly. Saurabh says,

Indians are very fresh gamers while the western audience has been gaming for bit. You can’t give a one year old a six year old toy to play with. Only when you give them a toy meant for a one year old, they will enjoy. I think that’s one of the key things that we did right. I hadn’t thought about it but now in hindsight, we realize that the product, the UI and the interface, everything was in place.

Octra team has very strong technology background. Their products always worked and they claim to have not even a single minute of downtime in the whole 2014. Saurabh believes that Octra is a very sturdy platform which gaming didn’t have before. That’s another thing that they got right.

What’s making at Octra?

Recently, during the Cricket world Cup 2015, Octra introduced cricket betting inside Teen Patti game. Teen Patti has been in the market for about a whole year and the team wanted to make something fresh for their English audience. Saurabh says,

Indians love cricket and this is one of the most engaging activities. We wanted to monetize on that frenzy and we added cricket betting feature, especially during the world cup. The odds are being calculated using an algorithm and we let people bet Teen Patti chits on the outcome of these matches. We saw over 700,000 bets in a single game with booking of over Rs 10000 crore. Even in virtual chits, it is a very large number.

Octra is a 50-member strong team with a lot of people with gaming experience. They are adding on design and engineering team at the moment.

The boots rapper and the dream

For six years, Saurabh had bootstrapped Octra. He pitched to only four to five VCs at that time. Since he made some money out of his first exit, he invested it in Octra. The idea was to get the product right first and only when Teen Patti clicked after the pivot, Saurabh focused on getting funds.
Saurabh says,

Seeing our product being used and loved by the common man gives me a kick. We are making social devices here in India where a rich guy uses the same thing as the guy who’s selling Prasad in front of a temple. I get a thrill out of building technology that is touching every day.

You can download Teen Patti Game on Android and ios

Website:- octro

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