Lumikai Pathbreakers- Edition III

Lumikai
23 min readMar 31, 2022

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If not me, then who? If not now, then when?

In the world of entertainment, many people still think of a male character as a protagonist and a female character as a sidekick.

However, sometimes, it is the princess who kills the dragon and saves the prince.

As per BBC, female gamers grew by 19% in 2020 in Asia, the fastest-growing region in the world, expanding faster than male audiences. However, female protagonists featured in games grew from 5% in 2019 to a mere 18% in 2020.

For years, gaming has served as a quintessential canvas for users to paint their own lives. Yes, sometimes multiple lives too! So why dichotomize, have restricted gender roles and limited representation?

We believe art is about using a whole box of crayons. Thus, as we talk about increased inclusivity in gaming and interactive media, we believe it is essential to go behind the scenes to learn and highlight the stories of these very “artists and creators” who are powering through narrative changes in real and reel life.

We are proud to bring to you the Third Edition of “Lumikai Pathbreakers”, an initiative to showcase some of the bold, brilliant, and fierce women in the Indian games industry. The women role models we needed as young girls.

This blog is an inside look at some women who have made and continue to make invaluable contributions to the world of gaming in India.

We could not be prouder to feature them.

Aashima Arora, Investments Lead, Polygon

Aashima Arora

Aashima is an economics graduate from Lady Shri Ram College. Growing up, gaming was a constitutive part of her life. From cassette games like Contra to FPS games like IGI and Max Payne and finally, all the way to the COD and CS of the 90s heyday; gaming was like recess for her, a mode of escapism. Gaming served as one of the key drivers that helped her battle the bullying she faced, and over the years became an integral part of her weekends. Upon graduating college, she ventured into banking, including a stint at Citibank. Because of the bitcoin bull run at the same time, she picked up the basics of trading and crypto. Aashima always wanted to work for the future and create a lasting impact on the world. Having worked with the UN and World Bank on climate change during her alma mater, she was the first hire in the emerging technology space at a climate change organisation under HBS alum Ashish Dhawan. Running India’s first climate tech, EV, mobility startup challenge with leading VCs and spearheading angel networks that deployed $4Mn+ capital, making some tremendous exits, made her realise that investments is her calling. Combining this experience, with her passion for crypto trading and gaming while growing up, she is now managing the VC shop at Polygon, leading investments in early-stage web3 gaming startups.

“Women are gaming in increasingly growing numbers but they tend to not play the more complex, revenue-generating hard-core games such as first-person shooters and fantasy games in as many numbers as men. A special focus on advertising strategically and helping bring in product elements that incentivise women to explore such games would create a win-win situation for everyone involved.” Aashima Arora

Aditi Khanna, Product Marketing Manager, Google

Aditi Khanna

After graduating from SRCC, Aditi joined Google as an Account Strategist where she worked on improving global operations for outsourced teams and launching Google Ads in Hindi. These initiatives led to a 5X improvement in efficiency. Aditi has always been passionate about driving impact at scale and wanted to empower businesses further which led to her next role as New Business Strategist. She has advised top 5000 company CXOs on digital strategy and driven 3X impact to the business. Her efforts led to her being awarded the APAC best performer award. Aditi believes that gaming chose her. She encountered her current role as a result of wanting to explore apps and was entrusted with managing game developers. After this, she fell in love with how passionate game developers are and felt the need to help grow the community. Aditi has advised top gaming companies such as Playsimple Games, Gametion Technologies, Blacklight Studios to help grow their business and drive growth. Aditi has also led initiatives that help grow the community of game developers. She recently conceptualised and led two gaming summits that educated the industry on best practices in funding, design, monetisation and industry potential. At Google, she has won two awards because of the scaling impact on growing the profitability of these partners. Aditi believes that gaming is at an inflection point in India and would love to see more women being a part of this. Her dream is to support game developers who are from India and cater to their global needs.

“To all the women out there, I’d just like to say-Game on. Aditi Khanna

Aishwarya Nigam, Chief of Staff, Eloelo

Aishwarya Nigam

Aishwarya has been in the gaming industry for four years now. She started her career working on fan-engagement products for IPL & BCCI and later delved into RMG/fantasy cricket for the Indian market. Her last stint was at Playsimple Games, where she managed production for five titles in a 50+ member team. In 2021, Playsimple’s title - Word Trip was listed as the #1 free word game on Play Store in the US. Currently, Aishwarya is working as the Chief of Staff at Eloelo, where she focuses on GTM, product and user acquisition for their live-streaming app. Aishwarya builds game teams and cheers them through their launches! At Eloelo she plays a role in building live and social games for the next billion Indian users. What draws Aishwarya to gaming as an industry is that it operates at the intersection of psychology, UX, creativity and business. The minute you step into a gaming studio, it is hard to miss this diversity and inclusion in teams. With a great team, one can create anything out of nothing.

“As Lara Croft reminded us years ago, the extraordinary is in what we do, not who we are. 45% of all gamers in the U.S. are women. It’s about time that the gaming industry benefits from women game-makers and seeks their representation in the teams that are building these games.” Aishwarya Nigam

Anshu Dhanuka, Co-founder, Paper Boat Apps

Anshu Dhanuka

Anshu is the co-founder of Paper Boat Apps. At Paper Boats, Anshu looks at everything from game conceptualisation to gameplay design, art direction, UI/UX, sound effects, music and voice-overs. Her journey with developing games started when the iPad was released. Anshu noticed how easily her daughter took to it. She realised that games are a great tool for engaging children and hence started building educational games for kids, which are inspired by what children like to do in real life. Kiddopia is Paper Boats’ flagship edutainment app. It is a top-ranked game on the US App Store and it has ~15 million downloads worldwide. Kiddopia has a 4.5-star rating with 65k reviews on the App Store alone. It has received critical acclaim by many prominent experts in the industry, teachers, parents, and most importantly it is adored by children. Anshu has always been passionate about all types of games, from sports, strategy board games to video games. And when she realised that she could extend this passion to constructively engage and educate kids, she decided to choose edutainment as her career. Anshu has a deep understanding of the difference between games that simply entertain, and those that provide the tools to teach and help kids develop in the early stages of life. As a passionate gamer and tech-savvy mother, she takes pride in her ability to personally connect to users of the Kiddopia app and hopefully make a difference in their lives.

“Women and gaming are going to be the most explosive combination in the times to come. It will revolutionise user experience and will transform and evolve the way games are currently designed.” Anshu Dhanuka

Archana Reddy, Ex-Head of Content Strategy, Eloelo

Archana Reddy

Archana is an engineering graduate specialising in electronics and communication by degree, but her true interest lies in content. Archana’s career started as an engineer for the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO). After a few internships, she joined LinkedIn as part of their content operations team and fell in love with the culture of startups and the power of interactive media. A lesser-known fact about Archana, she is a United Nations Organization recognized writer. Before Eloelo, Archana served as a content manager leading strategy and ops at ShareChat and Trell. At Eloelo, Archana heads content strategy and operations overseeing game content, managing game hosts, and vernacular language content. She plays a pivotal role in managing content and taking indigenous, domestically-loved, Indian games live and making them creator led. Having never built games, Archana believes that it is very challenging to design in-game content for already renowned games. There is no playbook and no prototype. She finds building everything from scratch and influencing a vast user base extremely gratifying.

“We often think that it is not normal for a woman to choose gaming as a career. Featured Indian reality shows like KBC are all male-led. At Eloelo, most of the games are female and creator-led. It’s fascinating to watch them in real-time, live, and with engaged users. Gaming as an entertainment medium truly transcends gender.” Archana Reddy

Deepanjali Sarna, Associate Game Designer, Zynga

Deepanjali Sarna

At age six, Deepanjali was introduced to Super Mario by her mother. From Nintendo games to console games, Deepanjali loved exploring retro games like Contra and then Prince of Persia. In 2016, while participating in competitive games, she realised she wanted to make games of her own. At university, Deepanjali got selected to be part of several programs such as being a Senior Student Ambassador with Unity Technologies to mentor her peers, receiving an opportunity to speak at Unite India Student Summit for 2 consecutive years- 2018 and 2019, and also interning as a Technical Game Artist at GSN Games. She has been part of a 3-month long peer learning program organized by Goethe Institute, Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur and Games, Bavaria, where she worked on a game that focused on teaching digital literacy to school students. Later, Deepanjali received an opportunity to be a Women in Games Ambassador. Apart from being an Associate Game Designer at Zynga, Deepanjali actively advocates for female gamers and regularly speaks at gaming events, having spoken at events such as Girlscript Summit India 2020 and Techign Summit 2021, and West Virginia University. She understands that not everyone is lucky to have a support system while they try to break stereotypes. She wants to be someone who helps younger girls thrive.

“We all start as Princess Peach but end up breaking stereotypes like Aloy.” Deepanjali Sarna

Joanesca Machado, Director Marketing and Communications, Loco

Joanesca Machado

‘Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game’, this quote by the legendary baseball player Babe Ruth has been key to the decisions in Joanesca’s life. At the onset of her career, she decided to take the path less travelled and chose a career in movie marketing. Fast forward 8 years, her journey as a marketer goes beyond movies to include sports, web series, digital entertainment and gaming. Prior to Loco, Joanesca worked with Red Chillies Entertainment managing large-scale movie campaigns for the biggest brand in India- Shah Rukh Khan. Following this, she joined Sequoia-backed digital entertainment start-up, Pocket Aces to head branding, marketing, and strategic partnerships. In 2020, she took up the opportunity to build Loco’s new brand and community as the product pivoted from an interactive quiz app to live game streaming and esports. Some of the key marketing campaigns she has led at Loco include the launch of leading gaming creators- Sc0ut, Jonathan Gaming, esports teams such as Fnatic India, GodLike, to name a few. Joanesca also played a pivotal role in onboarding exclusive partnerships with marquee brands such as Activision Blizzard’s first official Call of Duty mobile tournament in the country ‘India Cup’, category building and awareness for NBA 2K league, Krafton’s Battleground Mobile India after-party live event, Gillette and Intel’s first gaming show sponsorships in India to name a few. In addition to her current marketing and communications role, she has taken on the responsibility of a producer to build the ‘Loco Original’ content vertical on the app. Building the brand and strategising the marketing campaigns for India’s leading live game streaming and esports platform at a time when the gaming sector is at the helm of major growth is one of the reasons that motivated Joanesca to take up a career in gaming.

“Let nobody make you feel like you don’t fit and you won’t win. Strong, well-informed ideas and hard work will never go unseen. If you’re passionate about gaming or whatever your dream might be, go for it. Always remember-never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” Joanesca Machado

Kristel Anbu, Senior Game Designer, Zynga

Kristel Anbu

Kristel is a Senior Game Designer at Zynga. She started her career in online advertising with Google and moved to gaming because she, quite simply, wanted to write more. Kristel then joined Zynga as a content writer and eventually moved to game design as she worked on several different Zynga games like Cafe World, Mafia Wars, and the games in the FarmVille franchise. Currently, Kristel looks at free-to-play, live ops, working on new game mechanics and optimisations, while leading design efforts on revenue-focused pods like Farmville 2: Country Escape. She has spent the past several years working on free-to-play games, where she finds joy in delivering immersive, rewarding experiences to Zynga players. Kristel wants to write stories and architect designs for the players, so going from narrative to game design seemed like a natural progression for her. Kristel believes that she is a writer and a gamer who just happened to get lucky enough to stumble into a career writing for games. She left a company she loved to move to a career she loves because it combined being creative with the benefit of having that creativity reach thousands of people.

“What’s great about games is the rich diversity of stories to tell and the endless experiences to craft means there’s automatically a place at the table for everyone.” Kristel Anbu

Lamha Bijili, Associate Game Designer, Zynga

Lamha Bijili

Gaming being a universal way of expression, Lamha particularly likes to focus on the emotions a player experiences while at play. During her undergraduate days at NIFT, Bangalore, working on a project with the artisans in Channapatna, Lamha recognised her love for creating interactive product experiences. She then pursued toy and game design at the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar. While at university, she co-authored and published 2 research papers in the ACM library, represented her team for a project in Scotland and her work was chosen as one of the top 12 from teams across the world. She also designed and conceptualized the project “Ikigai Land” which was chosen as top 5 in HCI India Student Consortium. Prior to joining Zynga as a game designer, Lamha has worked on projects for several notable Indian consumer brands such as Chumbak, Shumee Toys, to name a few. At Zynga, Lamha works on 3 slot games namely Game of Thrones Slots, Willy Wonka Slots and Black Diamond Casino. She designs the mechanics of the slot machines and designs live-op features that go live to elevate the player experience and generate revenue. She strongly believes that gaming can curate spaces and experiences that go beyond imagination and has the power to be super impactful to players.

“You throw like a girl, you shoot like a girl and you game like a girl sound like tomorrow’s elite compliments.” Lamha Bijili

Payal Aher, Senior Manager, Tilting Point

Payal Aher

Payal leads business development, strategic partnerships, gaming acquisition, game publishing, and distribution at Tilting Point. Born and raised in India, she had hardly heard of any big gaming companies with female business development members. Her first touchpoint working with gaming was at 18th Parallel, a gaming startup based out of Pune, India. And the career reign of her doing business around gaming began. Payal worked on early market products such as Android TV and Android set-top-box gaming in India. Before Tilting Point, Payal managed strategic partnerships around content licensing for the Jio games store across all Jio product devices. Having had the opportunity to represent the Indian gaming market in various prestigious gaming conferences across SEA and Europe, Payal has established a good network base of game developers, publishers and distribution platforms in India and broadly across Europe. Payal always had a passion for casual games but coming from a business educational background she never thought marketing or sales could play a major role for gaming companies. As one of the youngest business development team members in India, she continues to manage the SEA region for Tilting Point.

“Things are changing around the world with the impactful presence of women in every area of gaming, from game development, design to marketing and business development. This is our chance to rise and shine as well as support, and encourage other women in the community”. Payal Aher

Pradipta Sarkar, Product Director, Loco

Pradipta Sarkar

Pradipta began her career more than a decade ago in book publishing. In her publishing career, she has contributed to the publication of 300+ books, several of which went on to feature on Indian bestseller lists. As people started moving to more online content, Pradipta moved and became a digital content editor- first at POPxo, and later at FilterCopy. It is at Pocket Aces that she started working for Loco, leading content and production. In between those roles, Pradipta had a brief stint with the FICCI, served as a lecturer for Jadavpur University’s postgraduate certificate in editing and publishing, and played a minor acting role in a Bengali feature film! The most diverse roles that she has played, however, have been at Loco. Initially, Pradipta worked with the content segment at Loco, scripting, directing the live shows, and eventually managing live production for four simultaneous live shows in 4 different languages. As Loco launched game live-streaming in 2020, she moved over to the non-content workstreams, overseeing tech delivery, fine-tuning product design function; then, launching loco.gg and, anchoring and executing other features such as Loco’s viewer rewards program. Pradipta believes that she didn’t choose gaming as a career, it happened to her by extremely good fortune. Pradipta used to be an avid gamer back in the late 2000s when she recalls being dis-invited from her friends’ house for hogging their PS2 for too long in her bid to conquer Def Jam: Fight for NY. What was frowned upon as passion is now for millions of people a vibrant and fast-paced industry that entertains and within which they can grow professionally.

“Always play to win. And if you lose, respawn and break yet another glass ceiling.” Pradipta Sarkar

Prerna Jhunjhunwala, Founder, Creative Galileo

Prerna Jhunjhunwala

Prerna is the founder of Little Paddington, a highly acclaimed preschool in Singapore and Creative Galileo, a new-age ed-tech start-up transforming early learning globally for children from three to ten years. After graduating from NYU, Prerna moved to Singapore with a vision to modernize and upscale the education imparted to children in their budding or formative years. She firmly believes that a child’s future not only depends on the grades in various subjects but also on their impeccable social, cognitive and leadership skills. In less than two years, the app has witnessed 6 million downloads from the Indian subcontinent with 600k monthly active users. Creative Galileo has been making strides in the ed-tech sector. In the last quarter of 2021, Prerna and her co-founder raised their seed round of $2.5m. The world’s leading startup research firm listed Creative Galileo on their annual list as the top 100 ed-tech start-ups in Asia. Prerna is also a recipient of The Economic Times ‘Women in Tech’ Inspiring Business Leader Award and Entrepreneur India’s most coveted recognition ‘Creative Entrepreneur of the Year’. As someone from the education industry, both online and offline, Prerna recognizes the potential of games in the early learning space. She believes that it is a perfect combination of tech, fun and creativity. She feels that gamification allows personalization, which is the need of the hour, keeping in mind individual learning objectives, skills and goals.

“Women are contributing significantly to the gaming industry, and I believe with the gaming sector becoming more inclusive, women leaders are not far behind and will be the real game-changers soon”. Prerna Jhunjhunwala

Richa Singh, Founder, FanClash Technologies

Richa Singh

Richa is the founder of FanClash Technologies. She is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur and IIM Ahmedabad and has worked as a banker in the US, China and Asia. She served a short stint as a consultant will Oliver Wyman before starting her first startup-BigStylist.com, a beauty service marketplace based out of India. At her first venture, Richa managed a cross-functional team of 300 employees including service professionals, contact centres, product team, marketing (digital and offline), technology, finance and budgeting. Richa has always been a gamer. She believes that gaming is a source of child-like happiness and hence needs the brightest people to solve it. Richa identifies herself as an avid, core esports gamer, playing games such as LOL, DOTA, Counter-Strike to name a few. FanClash is her second stint as an entrepreneur and the first as a gamer. At FanClash, Richa looks at all aspects of business building. The venture is backed by several marquee Indian and international investors.

“Gaming will see the rise of women over the next decade. A similar journey that the FMCG, e-commerce, and banking sector saw in the last two decades.” Richa Singh

Rikta Doshi, Head D2C, Nodwin Gaming

Rikta Doshi

Rikta is the Head of D2C at Nodwin, building competitive intelligence and organizational strategy. She works with some of Nodwin’s key clients to help them build their position in gaming. Rikta started her professional career as an analyst with CRISIL. Post graduating with an MBA degree, she has been involved in strategy & CEO office roles at various companies- ranging from an entertainment conglomerate to a mobility startup. Her career in gaming started when she joined the corporate strategy team at Viacom18, leading their esports initiative. At Viacom18, she played a pivotal role in pulling off the pilot event- Dreamhack, the world’s largest digital gaming festival. This experience served as an eye-opener for her as it made her realise how strong the pull of gaming is. Rikta believes that gaming gives everyone a platform to create an identity for themselves, allowing users to legitimize every new skill, accomplishment and victory. More than 70% of all smartphone users in India play one game or the other. As smartphone penetration increases and more people take to gaming it increases the scope for multiple genres of games to exist. Rikta finds that it is particularly an exciting time to be in this space.

“A recent survey by InMobi shows that women spend up to 53 minutes daily on mobile gaming with the most popular genre being ‘action games’. I believe that the day when we have real-life warrior princesses isn’t very far.” Rikta Doshi

Sahana H S, Senior Product Manager, Zynga

Sahana H S

Sahana started as a coder 10 years ago but soon realized that her interest lies in making decisions rather than following instructions. So, she made a move to study business management at IIM Bangalore. Before moving to a product role in gaming, Sahana worked with P&G as an IT Manager. Gaming was a tough move because Sahana would have had to start from scratch but she decided to go ahead and make this career shift. At Zynga, Sahana decides on what a game should be like. It could be either building a new game from scratch or improving an existing game. She has worked on game liveops, economy design, feature design, and analysis at Gameberry Labs and Zynga. The uniqueness of her everyday job keeps her going. Sahana never imagined she would ever end up in this industry because there was always a roadblock in her head as a youngster that “games are addictive”. As she grew up, she understood that she needed to let go of this negative connotation. When she took it up as her career, it was like magic. Work never felt like work. Gaming has helped Sahana sail through tough times and has made her confident about her talent.

“When passion and grit are in you then nothing can stop you from choosing and succeeding in whatever field you want to. Gender has nothing to do with it.” Sahana H S

Shailja Mittal, User Acquisition Manager, Zynga

Shailja Mittal

Shailja began her career in finance and marketing, working with an array of intriguing products across retail-tech, mobility, and e-commerce. At Zynga, she started her journey as a global resource for creative testing & analysis, across all the titles. In a short period, Shailja got into a more focused role towards new user acquisition for slots/casino games and other mid-core titles such as Star Wars Hunters and CSR2. Currently, Shailja works on launching new games at Zynga and handling user acquisition through performance marketing. Having had the opportunity to manage marketing communications at the beginning of her career, eventually turned into a keen interest in growth marketing and product management for Shailja. Being a numerically and technology-driven individual, gaming lies in the perfect conjunction of both for a marketer like herself. She finds her marketing role at Zynga to be one of the most exciting ones she has been on. The gaming industry provides her with a holistic learning curve by providing continuous momentum on the product side, power to influence strong user sentiment, and creativity.

“More often than not, do we not realize that the depiction of female characters in the virtual world of games is a reflection of how women are perceived in the real world. Women are more than just love interests and don’t need to be rescued by a male character. After all, James Bond who? We’re the Games-Bond of today and tomorrow.” Shailja Mittal

Shilpi Roy, Lead Artist, Bombay Play

Shilpi Roy

Shilpi is the Lead Artist at Bombay Play. When she started her first job, she had no idea how her career was going to boom in the gaming industry. She was passionate about art and was skilled in adobe software. When Shilpi saw people enjoying her artwork while playing games, she became confident in her skill-set and wanted to explore more into gaming. In the initial stage, she spent sleepless nights to meet deadlines to achieve high-quality game art, worked hard to channel her best creativity and with time, got promoted from a Game Artist to a Sr. Game Artist and now a Lead Artist. Shilpi realised that being passionate about one’s work and pushing oneself beyond limits opens doors for immense success. Getting to work collaboratively with passionate people for successful outcomes is one of Shilpi’s favourite aspects of this industry. Shilpi has wanted to be a part of an industry where she can turn her passion into her career. Gaming has become that for her.

“Be the kind of woman that makes other girls step their game up!” Shilpi Roy

Sneha Balasubramanian, Manager, InMobi

Sneha Balasubramanian

Sneha embarked on her journey with InMobi as an analyst upon her graduation. Little did she realize back then that she would immerse herself in mobile games and onboard new apps. Currently, she helps new mobile gaming publishers, studios and indie developers onboard with InMobi and helps monetize their App Store and Play Store titles. A lesser-known fact, since her early days, Sneha has had an affinity toward sports. She represented her school and college in table tennis and basketball tournaments. Her passion for sports finds expression in her work through her engagement with publishers and mobile games. Sneha has helped onboard 60+ publishers for InMobi and works with partners, such as Bombay Play, Blacklight Studios, Moonfrog and many others in India. She now leads mobile gaming partnerships for India, Europe, and Turkey. She recently spoke at the Turkey Hyper Casual Gaming Conference on how publishers can best monetize their ad inventory. Sneha landed an opportunity with InMobi where her initial role required her to spend time downloading App Store, Google Play games, checking SDKs and game ratings, and also playing games. She instantly fell in love with this industry. Gaming as a career has allowed Sneha to explore her creativity and provided her with an opportunity to work with some of the brightest people from different countries/cultures. Sneha believes that women in gaming have the power to shape the future the way we want to see it.

“The female century is here!” Sneha Balasubramanian

Dr. Subi Chaturvedi, Chief Corporate Affairs and Public Policy Officer, InMobi

Dr. Subi Chaturvedi

At the core, Subi associates herself as a storyteller, involving herself in changing perceptions, building new narratives, advocating and working towards building ecosystems that can foster innovation. Subi has worked extensively towards changing the existing perception of gaming in India and improving its adoption. To build ecosystems, Subi divides her work between regulatory, policy and communications. On the communications front, she has launched significant and impactful national campaigns. In the policy and regulatory area, her work has involved extensive consensus building, policy advocacy and industry strategy for recognition of skill-based online games and business continuity in the country. Subi strongly believes in a user-centric approach to tech-led innovation, focused on the end-user. She has previously been on the board of UKIBC, UN-IGF appointed by the UN Secretary-General on Internet Governance and NETMundial, Global governments meeting hosted by Brazil on the future of Internet Governance. Subi believes that gaming is language agnostic and there is a game for everyone; from action and arcade games to puzzles and trivia. Gaming as a platform can be used to educate, empower and entertain the masses and that to her is a worthwhile endeavour. When she got a chance to work in the gaming industry, she took it without a second thought. As the gaming sector opens the doors to these innovations, Subi wants to be the one holding the door open.

“Gaming is the most creative, engaging and entertaining way of achieving an end goal. It provides an inclusive, non-discriminatory and safe platform for everyone. Half of the potential market for gaming is women, so it is crucial to have more women making decisions regarding the kind of games that are being pushed into the market. When it comes to gaming, women have found a space where they can grow and excel and call it their own.” Subi Chaturvedi

Tejasvi Bongirwar Musale, Co-founder & CEO, Luma World

Tejasvi Bongirwar

Tejasvi is a computer science engineering graduate and also holds an MBA in Marketing from NMIMS, Mumbai. Upon graduating, she joined Idea Cellular as a manager. Her ability to regularly exceed her targets coupled with innovative talent management skills allowed her to rise the ranks rapidly within the company. Her stint at Idea helped her gain tremendous experience as a product manager for the western region of India. Tejasvi has also served as a Product Marketing Manager at Practo. She was instrumental in helping the fledgling healthcare innovator increase revenue multifold. Tejasvi loves to take on new challenges, especially in non-traditional female domains. Having been passionate about reforming education, Tejasvi wanted to provide the opportunity to learners across the world to gain access to quality education irrespective of inherent ability, language, culture or geographic location. To make skill development enjoyable it was obvious to associate play with learning in some capacity. This is where her tryst with gaming began. Games are inclusive, speak a universal language of fun, help break stereotypes and most of all it is something people of all ages can relate to. For Tejasvi, education and gaming are two peas in a pod.

“Men may have shaped the gaming industry in the past but women shall define its future. It will be fun, it will be purposeful and it will unite us all!” Tejasvi Bongirwar Musale

If you know women in games who inspire you and are doing incredible work, then please encourage them to apply here.

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Lumikai

India’s pioneering interactive media and gaming VC. Early stage is where the magic happens! Contact: hello@lumikai.com