Zynga India centre developing end-to-end gaming titles

Founder, CEO Mark Pincus says company's India centre to grow more than any other centres

Social gaming company Zynga might be scaling down its operations elsewhere, but India is clearly a growth centre for the San Francisco-based company, its founder and CEO Mark Pincus said here on Wednesday.

Pincus who was on his maiden trip to Bangalore was highly impressed by the dedication and skillset that the employees of the company’s Bangalore centre has demonstrated during the last two years.

“India is the terrific investment and experience for us. After San Francisco, this (India) becomes our biggest centre, and we are growing more here than any other location,” Pincus said.

“When I started this company in 2007, we had just 25-30 people, and it is amazing to see now we have grown to around 400 people just in India,” said Pincus.

Zynga, best known for ‘FarmVille’, a popular game on Facebook is going through a turbulent time in the recent past primarily because of the sweeping change in consumer behavior as they are spending more time on mobile phones rather than desktop computers.

The company, last year, had announced to reduce around 5% of its global workforce as a cost-cutting exercise apart from shutting down its studios in the UK and Japan. It had announced to phase out about 13 older games.

Last month, the company, in a filing to US market regulator SEC had said that Pincus has opted to take an annual salary of just $1 in 2013 and forgo all cash bonuses.

“I told the Board that I want to take $1 towards my salary this year because I am an owner of the company and I believe in its future. I want to make that really clear to the shareholders and the employees because they invest their money and energy for building this company,” Pincus told Business Standard.

Pincus still maintains majority control in the company which he founded in 2007.

In early 2010, Zynga opened its India centre for core R&D purposes. Subsequently, the company set up the gaming studio in the country which started supporting Zynga’s existing gaming titles by contributing new features and newer version of those games.  

The company said for its Bangalore studio is developing a new gaming title completely, for the first time out of India. It however did not specify the time frame by which the new game would be launched.

“In 2012, when we opened our India centre, it was primarily focused on core R&D on distributed computing. In the second phase, while continuing to do that, we set up the studio which took up large live games to develop features and content. Now, we are developing new IPs and new titles entirely out of India which will be announced shortly,” said Shan Kadavil, country manager for Zynga in India.

In 2012, Zynga reported $1.28 billion, an increase of 12% from the previous year though the company reported a net loss of $209 million. The company employs around 3000 people across the globe.