Why India's startup founders aren't gamers, or won't admit to it

OYO's Ritesh Agarwal and some others love chess for its strategic lessons, but few founders want to be seen splurging time or money on gaming

Ritesh Agarwal, who finished high school 11 years ago and started OYO a year later, loves board games. And he swears by chess, even though, as OYO’s group CEO, he might not find a lot of time for it.

“I like playing the occasional board game. As a keen follower of chess, I have always been fascinated by the sport. A brilliant combination of strategy and intelligence, it greatly mirrors the problem-solving skills required in the entrepreneurial world,” Agarwal told Business Standard in a written communication.  

His interest in the game has only increased with India’s recent successes in it. There are nine Indians among the world’s top 100 chess players and two in the top 10. R Praggnanandhaa, 18, played the World Number 1, Magnus Carlsen, in the finals of the FIDE World Cup in Baku.

Chess seems to be a favourite with many startup founders.

Akash Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Zypp Electric, says he plays chess as a weekly ritual. Zypp is an electric mobility startup known for providing last-mile delivery fleet management. It embraced electric vehicles before they became all the rage. Gupta swears that chess sharpens one’s decision-making.

Divakar Vijayasarathy, founder and CEO of DVS Advisors, a tax-centric professional services firm, has a private group on Chess.com. The game shows him what it takes to sacrifice smaller pieces for a larger game plan.

“My biggest focus area in chess is to never lose sight of the ultimate goal, that is to say, it’s not about the number of pawns you win, it’s about the checkmate,” says Vijayasarathy.

Board games and puzzles also help limit screen use and expand the time corporate leaders spend with their friends and family. “My job is intense, and I try to spend any spare time with my family. Board games are a great way to do that. It could be something as simple as Ludo or Scrabble. In an age where we increasingly find ourselves on our phones, board games offer us much-needed digital downtime,” says OYO’s Agarwal, who got married in March this year.

Gupta of Zypp lists solving puzzles with his five-year-old daughter as his favourite weekend activity. “It is always encouraging to see her enthusiasm, and it teaches me a great deal about taking different approaches towards solving a problem,” he says. He believes “mind games” like bridge and poker, which he plays with his colleagues, impart lessons about teamwork and healthy competition.

Shailendra Singh Rao, founder of Creduce, says Sudoku is his go-to game, be it alone or with friends. Creduce is a service provider in the field of climate change and carbon asset management.  
 

“Considering we are almost always in different time zones or cities, my colleagues and friends keep updating their levels and achievements on a daily and weekly basis. Sudoku keeps us connected,” Rao says.  He encourages his colleagues to pick up the game.

All work…

Agarwal, Gupta, Vijayasarathy, and Rao are in a minority. Most CEOs, founders, and co-founders Business Standard spoke to said they did not have the time to play games. As some of them put it: “It does not fit into their overall narrative.”

It is different in the Silicon Valley, the California epicentre of the startup wave that has spread to several parts of the globe. Many founders and CEOs in the Valley are known to be aficionados of games, especially of the video variety. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Google’s Larry Page have never tried to hide their passion for gaming. And Elon Musk, the boss at Tesla and SpaceX, generally does not hide much either.

On October 2, Musk braved a run through Diablo IV’s most difficult level, Tier 100 Nightmare Dungeon. He was testing the social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), which he now owns, for its game-streaming abilities.

There are a few founders in India who do not mind firing a virtual semi-automatic, crashing a few digital Ferraris, or blowing up the odd zombie.

“Hell, yeah! What’s better at the end of a tough day than to hack through the hordes of rowdy Mongols in Ghost of Tsushima!” exclaims, the CEO of a Mumbai-based fintech start-up. But he won’t give out his name. “India Inc does not live in Silicon Valley. We don’t think it’s cool for our top bosses to be avid gamers,” he says.

Zypp’s Gupta loves to play video games such as Civilization and Age of Empire. “These games are more than mere pastimes; they are cognitive workouts. Over the years, I have observed that board and video games enhance problem-solving skills, cultivate adaptability, and help me gain fresh perspectives about different aspects of work,” he says.

Aditya Joshi, CEO at Pune-based tech start-up OpalForce, which is into technology, semiconductor, and talent solutions, likes playing FIFA and Spiderman on his screen, along with chess and poker. He is also part of social clubs that organise game events. This, he believes, is a good way to network, build relationships, or simply have a good time. “It helps me,” says Joshi.

In the fitness of things

But these are exceptions. In a market such as India, every penny counts. Investors and customers, say founders, do not want their CEO to spend either a lot of money or a lot of time on gaming consoles. Even Gupta lists chess as his weekly ritual and solving puzzles with his daughter as his favourite weekend activity, not video games.

Indeed, there was a time, a decade or so ago, when Indian startups would boast about having gaming stations in their offices and Friday-evening gaming sessions. It was part of the startup cool.

Along the road, the cool associated with video gaming dissipated. Gaming is very much a part of the corporate culture in the United States and the United Kingdom. Not so in India, not even in the world of technology startups.

An in-house counsellor with a Gurgaon-based textile startup says the reluctance to indulge in regular gaming by Indian startup founders, or own up to it, is more a matter of a company’s age. Newer startups are more up-front about their gaming, even encouraging employees to engage. Those closer to their IPOs are less flamboyant.

A lot of founders, however, swear by their fitness routines, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) regimes, and transformation challenges. OYO’s Agarwal has a daily schedule of HIIT mixed with strength work.

For visual evidence, look no further than the X timeline of Zerodha’s founder and CEO, Nithin Kamath. On October 5, his 44th birthday, Kamath posted a picture of himself in the gym showing his ripped torso. His body fat, said the accompanying post, was 14.3 per cent, the lowest it has been. He said he was posting the picture publicly for accountability.

With public accountability comes public image.