THE MAN BEHIND LUDO KING, VIKASH JAISWAL

Vikash Jaiswal was born in Patna, Bihar. As a teenager, he loved playing video games, especially in gaming parlours. Some of his most loved games were Nintendo Mario games and Road Fighter. While growing up he used to make greeting cards and give them to a local stationery shop to sell.

He pursued his Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from MIT, Bulandshahar. As a part of his thesis, he created a video game called ‘Eggy Boy’, a seven-level jump game like ‘Mario’ which was named PCQuest magazine’s ‘Game of the month’  for July 2003. He also took classes in animation, graphic design and 3D in Patna while pursuing his Bachelors. He migrated to Mumbai in 2004. He started working as a tech lead for Indiagames Ltd.

In 2008 Jaiswal left his job and started his own company Gametion, with an investment of 2.5 lakh and a team of seven people. Gametion originally created browser games however it shifted to android and ios. Most of these original games were published on oneonlinegames.com. Gametion participated in IGDC 2019 event, one of the most significant game developer conferences in South Asia.

In 2015 he came up with the idea for ludo king after coming across a Snakes and Ladders game app. He developed the game with one programmer and one graphic designer. It is developed on the Unity game engine and is available on Android, iOS, windows phone platforms. The game is the modernisation of the board game ludo which in turn is based on the ancient Indian game pachisi. Ludo King was first released on 20 Feb 2016 on the Apple store and is ranked no.1 in the top free games section. It is the first Indian gaming app to pass 100 million downloads. Ludo king won the Mobile and Tablet Game: Arcade / Casual (international) in gaming at the 19th FICII FRAMES Best Animated Frames  (BAF) Awards. Ludo King was selected as Best Casual Games of 2018 on Google Play Store by popular vote. According to Google’s annual Year in Search: Insights for Brands report, Ludo King was in the top 3 download’s games in India in 2018.

Mr Jaiswal has been recognized as ” icons of Navi Mumbai ” by the Economic Times Group.