This summer, as you watch the ICC Cricket World Cup tournament unfold on your mobile screens, you could also try your hand at managing a virtual cricket team, courtesy Hitwicket. A multiplayer mobile cricket game, the user is an owner, captain and coach of a virtual cricket team and competes with other users for glory. Hitwicket uses new-age technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning and was selected among the top 10 global sports start ups by HYPE, UK for its AI powered game engine.
“Being at the intersection of technology and creativity, gaming is a challenging field. When you launch a game, you directly compete with games built by the billion-dollar global companies of the world from Day 1. Long-term retention of subscribers is the difference between a decent game and the biggest gaming hits in the world. The challenges of multi-year engagement are very different and complex from those in the initial few weeks of engagement,” says Kashyap Reddy, co-founder of Hitwicket. “Additionally, aspects like game economy balancing, cheating detection, pace of progress, etc., can only be addressed by extensive data analysis. We have an in-house analytics team headed by a former rocket scientist dedicated to this.”
Hitwicket has reached two million users across 100-odd countries with this game. To further its mission of building India’s first mobile Esports IP, the startup is all set to launch the next game, Hitwicket Superstars. This new AI-powered game drives up player engagement and retention along with new features in the gaming industry such as streamable content, vernacular support, voice chat will be available in this game. What stands out is the fact that Hitwicket Superstars will soon be the world’s first cricket game to introduce women cricketers!
Having raised $300,000 from The Chennai Angels, the lead investors include R. Narayanan, former president of TiE Chennai, R. Ramaraj, former CEO, Sify and Lakshmi Narayanan, founding member, Cognizant, the Hyderabad-based startup is now planning to raise $4 million.