About – Vishal Gondal
Born on the 14th of July, 1976; Vishal Gondal is the serial Indian entrepreneur & angel investor who is widely known for his stint – India video games! Presently, he is acts because the founder & CEO of GOQii Inc – which is a start-up this is getting famous for its Fitness associated gadgets and apps.
Personally speakme; Vishal changed into born in Mumbai, India and is presently based totally in Menlo Park, California along with his wife Harpreet, (who he met at some point of his India video games days) and sons Aryan & Veer.
Also Read:- Vishal Gondal: Founder & CEO of GOQii
During his early days, he became a national level Volleyball Player for the state of Maharashtra. He changed into also a Rank holder inside the National Computer Problem Solving Contest in ‘C’ programming.
In addition to that; he has additionally been an avid fan of strolling and taking walks, however prefers gambling them in preference to just watching. Since 2011, Vishal has taken component in quite a few 1/2-marathons as well, some of which consist of:
- Airtel Delhi Half Marathon – (2011 & 2012)
- Mumbai Half Marathon – (2012 & 2013)
- Amsterdam Half Marathon – (2012)
- Oxfam Trailwalker – a one hundred km team occasion in which teams stroll 100 kms in 48 hours.
- Trailwalker occasions, Bangalore (2012 & 2013)
- Trailwalker events, Mumbai 2013
A firm believer of the philosophy – “You ‘CAN’, if you suppose you ‘CAN’”; is likewise recognized to be a consultant in leading and motivating his group to try for that “1%” to obtain one hundred and one% success!
Early Life
A final yr dropout from R.A Poddar; Vishal started his career at a instead very early age! A particularly fascinated young boy that he changed into; he first controlled to get his fingers on computers in his eighth grade.
Within no time he mastered the skill; and believe it or not, looking at his skills he changed into given a venture worth INR 60,000 by means of a bank, to prepare their complete mailing list of around 6000 customers.
At kind of the identical age i.E. Thirteen; he stepped into the world of video games and by the point he became sixteen, he turned into running a laptop schooling institute in his dad’s storage, in which he taught WordStar, Lotus, and so forth. To add to that; Vishal additionally started out his first enterprise known as “FACT” in Chembur, Mumbai inside the equal 12 months!
During the ones days; he changed into working on developing a video game on Kargil War that befell between India & Pakistan, along with his team. His game became such that it allowed its players to shoot Nawaz Sharif and other Pakistanis.
Since the release; this game of his, won him a lot popularity that he was felicitated via the Indian military and turned into also interviewed by using STAR News, CNN and BBC.
Entrepreneurial Journey
Quite naturally; humans like Vishal are born marketers, who do no longer require unique qualification or schooling to run or shape a commercial enterprise. And matching up to that reputation of his; for the duration of his direction of time, Vishal has successfully given birth to multiple a success ventures too!
Now despite the fact that, he has been into entrepreneurship considering that a completely early age but formally he started his profession with the formation of INDIAGAMES!
- INDIAGAMES
As well all know, Vishal became an ardent fan of gaming for the reason that childhood & because there have been no formal education faculties to be had at that time, he learnt pretty a great deal the whole thing about gaming on his own. As a toddler; Vishal used to programme games on his ZX Spectrum & PC XT (advanced computers of the 80’s)!
And subsequently, this interest of his became out to become his commercial enterprise.
He first commenced-off by making video games for corporates and considered one of his first clients were Pepsi! For Pepsi, he advanced a recreation wherein game enthusiasts needed to shoot at Coke cans and made it pretty catchy.
This game of theirs, won large reputation right now after its launch; for this reason, right away they had been able to improve seed-investment for their begin-up and officially released Indiagames.
In the yr 1999; Vishal founded his 2d however the biggest entrepreneurial venture – ‘Indiagames’ with a crew of 5 participants, who were mainly engaged in publishing and growing video games throughout numerous systems like Internet, PC, broadband, mobile phones, PDAs, hand-held gaming gadgets and consoles.
To come up with a easier brief; India games became a organisation that evolved games for wi-fi, console and on line gaming structures and worked with top game publishers, handset producers, Hollywood studios or for that depend cellular operators internationally. They had also partnered with Activision and Marvel to expand and distribute a recreation based totally on Spider-Man.
Also Read:- Vani Kola: One of the most powerful women in the country!
Moving on; things commenced to work properly in their favour and they started out to gain the desired momentum as well. Quite frankly, that turned into because of the uniqueness and innovation they brought to the whole package deal!
But an awful lot to their or as a substitute anybody’s marvel, the dot-com bubble burst happened in 2000, killing maximum of the Internet-based totally agencies in India and someplace else. And simply everyone else, they too ran out of cash!
During that segment, 2001 to be specific; when slightly anybody used a cell smartphone, especially due to the heavy incoming and outgoing prices of INR 8-16 in step with minute, Vishal performed the biggest and riskiest gamble of his life. He guess the final INR 10-20 Lakhs that changed into left with him, on cellular gaming. But good fortune grew to become out to be in his favour and rest as all of us recognize is records!
By 2005, India games have become the most important & maximum vital gaming developer and publisher in India, which managed 60% share of India’s recreation-related wireless price-added offerings marketplace.
Later, in the same yr; Vishal made an statement, confirming the sale of a first-rate stake of the employer (76.29% to be specific) to TOM online Games – a subsidiary of TOM Online Inc. And kept his position as CEO, this became followed through another acquisition of a prime stake by UTV Software Communication in 2007.
And finally in 2011, Indiagames became fully acquired through Disney for around $a hundred million. At the time of acquisition, Indiagames changed into creating a earnings of $400,000 on sales of $eleven million and had over three hundred employees masking their workplaces in Mumbai, Beijing, London and Los Angeles.
A big turn in activities that occurred in 2012 whilst The Walt Disney Company India Pvt. Ltd. Received UTV! They restructured their digital assets below their newly shaped department – DisneyUTV Digital, and appointed Vishal Gondal as their new coping with director, broadly speaking to power better boom in games, video and audio services for cellular, online and interactive TV.
And since then Indiagames has been the market chief of the gaming industry under the esteemed guidance of – “India’s king of Gaming”!
SWEAT AND BLOOD VENTURE GROUP
While Indiagames became strolling at its height; Vishal determined to enter to extraordinary style altogether, a completely exclusive ball recreation! In 2007, he began operating on assignment capitalist firm, that specialize in helping begin-u.S.A.To construct base!
He believed that there are quite a few promising begin-u.S.A.Outside huge cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, however due to the fact there was a large gap in start-up investing lower back then, frankly no person wanted to assist begin-americabesides for an bizarre few like Erasmic Venture Fund & Seedfund, but as these fund managers have been seen to be growing bigger in length; the space could just increase, if anything else.
Hence, Vishal wanted to create a assignment which could assist to fill this gap within the begin-up surroundings, wherein the organizations could do more of handholding too! His concept became to discover them, put money into them and at big – mentor them. Honestly, this could only be done nicely by way of a a success entrepreneur and now not via a professional VC who in general like become a banker-turned-investor.
Without further ado; in 2008, Vishal released Sweat and Blood Venture Group, with targets to spend money on start-u.S. A seed stage. Vishal began-off with the aid of making an investment an undisclosed quantity of his private cash into the challenge. As in line with media reviews, the quantity changed into expected to be a small fraction of the whole amount that he had acquired for his partial exit from India games; kind of $4-5 million!
So some distance, the Venture institution has invested in four begin-ups:
- Gama Entertainment Systems – Mumbai-based totally developer and manufacturer of amusement hardware and software merchandise
- Instablogs – Shimla-primarily based running a blog network with a global network of citizen reporters (modelled on the idea of Canadian social information internet site NowPublic.Com)
- Docsuggest – Healthcare Software Services provider that allows sufferers to e-book appointments with hospitals and docs without delay via web or telephone.
- Kyko – a UK-based stealth start-up
And these days, after those rounds of investments; there have been extra successful entrepreneurs inclined to joining palms with him to help early degree agencies with an investments capability starting from $a hundred,000 to $500,000 (INR forty lakhs to INR 2 crores).
GOQii Inc (Pronounced as Go-Key)
Now, previous to founding GOQii; Vishal being the fitness-freak, attempted his hand on various health bands inside the marketplace, and obtained not anything else but unhappiness. During that time; his very own non-public teacher used to study his Fitbit statistics and used to assist him set reasonable goals, to help him put together for the half of marathons.
Also Read:- Upasana Taku: Bringing Mobikwik to the big stage!
That become while the whole idea of GOQii emerged! Vishal found out that; all of the Basis watch & Fitbit trackers eventually became decorative devices after a while, especially because those health trackers in standard had a commercial enterprise version, wherein they just offered the hardware and later it was as much as the consumer to use it or now not. Basically, their business version ended while a consumer made a purchase!
Now obviously, Vishal didn’t want his business to be even toward those strains; he wanted to make sure that his product sticks & remains with the user and will become an quintessential part of their conduct and dreams!
Hence, Vishal created GOQii; where their commercial enterprise version based on 3 key standards which started out while a user bought their product!
- Sustained Engagement
- Good Reinforcement and
- Constant motivation
He shaped a gadget in which the wearable fitness-band became given loose to its customers, and the fees a person paid, was gathered as a subscription price for personalised education.
And ultimate 12 months; after last its beta software with 1000 subscribers, GOQii was made commercially to be had in India in August 2014.
So what precisely is GOQii (stated as Go-Key)?
Headquartered in Menlo Park, California & based in February 2014; GOQii is fitness generation assignment which gives a mixture of a wearable health-band paired at the side of professional-led personalized coaching from global’s main specialists & coaches and lastly elements of karma, to permit a everlasting shift to a more fit life-style. In simple terms, all GOQii does is;
- The fitness-band the consumer wear’s, collects their pastime (steps, distance, time, energy, lively time, etc.) and sleep statistics.
- After which; there may be a personal teach assigned to study this facts of the consumer.
- Once the evaluation is completed, they connect to the consumer via cell app to guide them toward their fitness and fitness desires hence.
GOQii is presently subsidized through main angel buyers which includes: Amit Singhal (Google), Dr. Shriram Nene, Kanwaljit Bombra (Dell), Madhuri Dixit-Nene (Bollywood Actress), Mahesh Samat (Epic), Mike McNamara (Flextronics), Prashant Gulati(TiE), Sanjay Parthasarthy (Indix), Steve Luczo (Segate), Taher Khorakiwala and Vijay Vashee (Microsoft), & many greater!
GOQii only faces competition from the pinnacle-notch companies like Nike+ FuelBand, Fitbit Flex, and Jawbone Up.
Apart from Menlo Park, the company additionally has offices based in Mumbai, India & Shenzhen, China and soon might be increasing its offerings to the Middle East, the USA, and Singapore. Presently; the agency offers 6 & 365 days subscription programs for a fee of INR 5,999 and INR nine,999 respectively, which includes all elements of its surroundings (consisting of band, specialists, train and karma).
GOQii’s Mumbai team includes more or less 50 coaches who paintings from 10am until 6pm in an open workplace surrounded by fitness center device, natural food and areas to do high-depth workouts. Each in their coach’s maintain historical past in personal health! Other than that; they've additionally spent nearly 2 months actually analyzing a 118-web page manual with chapters on vitamins, cognitive behavioural therapy, and so on.
Also Read:- “We were glued to our laptop, waiting for our first sale to happen on Amazon!” – Shauravi & Meghana, Founders of Slurrp farm : An Indian food & snack brand
Achievements, Awards & Recognition
- Member of the Nokia Advisory Council for Games
- Advisor to Nokia on wi-fi and gaming technologies
- Listed among “Top 40 Indian entrepreneurs” by using Business Today (2001)
- Member of the Inner Circle for The Ink Talks (in association with TED)
- Head of the Mumbai Chapter of “International Game Developers Association”
- Nominated for Indian Entrepreneur of the yr award by way of E&Y (2004 & 2005)
- Listed amongst “Top 50 executives within the cell content material space” with the aid of a UK primarily based ‘Mobile Entertainment’ Magazine.
- Indiagames became featured among Red Herring Asia’s Top 100 agencies (2005)
- Featured among “20 Fab Indians to look at out for in 2006” by way of The Week mag
- Voted as “Top 25 powerful human beings in Indian digital commercial enterprise” (2012)
TRIVIA: – While at preservation; Vishal’s Audi Q7 changed into taken out for a 7-hour / a hundred-km joyride around the metropolis from the service station, which was later tracked using the monitoring tool.
