Gaming was always a passion for Rohit Gupta (below). It turned into serious business when he gave up his job at Electronic Arts and started Rolocule in 2010 with an initial investment of Rs.1 lakh given by his father. His classmate at engineering college in Pune, Anuj Tandon, gave up his job at Infosys to join him as a co-founder and game designer. Young game fanatics and animators at Rolocule develop realistic, social and casual games for iPhones and iPads.

Touch squash, super badminton and flick tennis are their most popular offerings in the app store: there have been over 1.5 million downloads in more than 100 countries so far. The company follows a freemium model where the basic game can be downloaded for free but additional features will be charged. Each game costs $2-6, of which Apple keeps 30%. “We expect the downloads to reach 5 millions by FY13 once we port the games to the Android platform as well,” says Tandon. Rolocule has lined up more than five or six games lined up for release in the next year, with a new take on tennis likely to be out by September.