Founded in 2018, Outscal is a Delhi-based startup that is an upskilling platform that aids game developers. In a short time frame, Outscal has spread its wings from gaming to the web3 space as well.
Today we look into the Outscal startup story, how it originated, its and team and how they are solving the problems in the gaming & web3 ecosystem via an exclusive interview with its founder, Mayank Grover.
How did this startup idea come up?
After my master’s from Carnegie Mellon University in 2014, I got my first full-time job as a game developer at DeNA in San Francisco.
It was literally a four-year journey after spending close to 1 crore to get into my first full-time job which involved leaving my full-time job at De shaw, moving to a new continent, becoming a student again, and taking a lot of loans to pay for college education in the USA.
And that was kind of my first encounter with how hard it is to get into the gaming industry being an outsider.
When I was working at jungle games and wanted to scale up our team, to build a portfolio of mobile games, we took close to two years, we ended up hiring only one engineer in India.
We used to get a lot of applications, some, even from premium companies like GSN and Disney, but they lacked the strong fundamental computer science knowledge in terms of what companies expect.
We were interviewing almost like a hundred people a month and we could only hire one. That was my second encounter with the problem.
Hiring talent for the game dev space is very hard. When I started my own game studio, I’ve encountered the same problem several times.
In 2018 this led to the inception of Outscal, matching the demand of game developers with supply, putting the community at the heart of it.
And what it turned out to be is an upskilling platform for game developers.
And now we have expanded the scope from gaming to web3 because we are seeing very interesting use cases for the people who are in the gaming ecosystem.
Outscal is making your entry into the gaming industry smoother
Indian startup Outscal is Upskilling and creating game developers for the world, which is the hottest industry right now.
Hundreds of alumni of Outscal are currently working in top gaming companies across India.
Currently, we are running our 19th cohort and have partnered with all top game studios across the globe and we have placed our previous students to companies like MPL, Gameshastra, and nCore games.
We hare started 2022 with a $70,000 Scholarship to 200 students to learn, build and publish their own game to launch their career in the gaming industry.
Now, the launchpad scholarship cohort is live and hundreds of students and working professionals have head started their careers in the fastest growing industry.
We have also launched Outscal Academy, a unique learn and earn education platform. It’s free for students who want to excel in their career in web3 and the gaming ecosystem.
While they complete each module they learn goodies, NFTs, and bitcoins. We then push these students’ profiles to relevant game studios for internships and full-time job opportunities.
We enjoy nurturing 100s of young talented professionals that enrol in our game development program every year with the best industry mentorship and the right opportunities to accelerate their careers.
With our learn and earn program we are empowering game developers who lack financial support to start their careers.
By creating a healthy game development ecosystem, we are helping to connect the talent to the right companies.
India has always been a pioneer country when it comes to innovation whether you talk about the invention of Zero or the father of Surgery.
But in recent years with the education industry shifting its focus from knowledge imparting to money mining, we have all come across a day when we bitched (discussed our frustrations) about our education system to our colleagues and peers.
The gap becomes much more obvious when you feature the lack of industry inputs and outdated teaching methodology in the mix.
Outscal was initiated with a belief to realign the balance between the opportunity to skill up and the cost at which it is achieved.
This combined with the feeling you get when a candidate publishes their first game or drops in an update about their placement is the reason why our team is focused on the various initiatives Outscal is currently undertaking.
From ISA(Income share agreement) based Full Stack Game development program to Launchpad program with scholarships worth $ 70,000. to the Learn and Earn initiative we are focused on providing young talented professionals with the best industry mentorship and the right opportunities to accelerate their careers.
How much has the company raised so far? Is there any investment from the founders’ side – if yes how much?
initially bootstrapped for 2 years before raising pre-seed round, during that time was funded internally from initial founder capital.
Did it start as a gaming edtech startup and then move to Web3? Or it was always in gaming and Web3 edtech space?
Started as gaming ed tech and will continue to be gaming ed-tech but cater to gaming technologies both in web2 and web3 world.
From the inception of Outscal, we are trying to create a global community of game builders.
We are now empowering our community to learn, connect and create future games for the web3 world.
Since a paradigm shift in technology is here, we want to give value to our community by giving them a head start in this industry.
The reason behind launching the startup just a talent shortage is not enough.
There has to be more market-based data and anecdotal evidence that he really wanted to because it’s a very niche area
There are approximately 250K jobs in the global gaming industry annually, (just on LinkedIn alone) out of which more than 50% are entry-level jobs.
Also to note, there are 1.25M jobs globally if you combine gaming with web3 which our estimates indicate is a $6.25B market.
The gaming industry in India is still be growing but it’s already a large industry globally and we are building a vertically integrated platform that has a global customer base.
What is the Team size of Outscal?
There are 12 full-time members as of now and we are growing the team as and when needed.
Company’s Revenue (Year-Wise)
In the final quarter of 2021, we had total revenue of $150 K for our job placement program.
The gaming industry has a $300 billion market size. And there is no ceiling for the web3 market size at this moment.
Competitors and future plan of the company
No direct competition, Indirect competition from broadly edtech platforms in the web development and data science space.
Our Future plan is expanding into the global markets starting with the US, already in talks with international game companies that are looking to hire talent remotely, and also looking at establishing new offices in India.
Closing Note
In the year 2022, we have started our offering called learn and earn, where we have made it easy and rewarding for any game dev enthusiasts to start their journey to the gaming and web3 ecosystem for free.
And on the other hand, we are aggressively expanding our B2B partnership globally, so that they can hire talent remotely from Outscal.