In a snug corner space in his father’s mechanical workshop in Mumbai, Vaibhav Chavan began his experiments in cyberplay in 2011—at the tail end of the cybercafé era.
“I had been working as a game designer for a few companies up until then, where my primary job was to scout smaller independent game studios that make good games at affordable prices. Back then, there weren’t many of those, and I saw that gap, and chose to cross over to the other side,” Chavan tells YourStory.
Thus began underDOGS Studio, with the sole intention of creating good web-based games (using Flash ActionScript) for bigger gaming companies. However, starting a business-to-business (B2B) gaming company had its unique set of challenges.
Soon, the market for mobile gaming boomed in India, and a few years later, the industry was eyeing PCs and consoles. Today, the “underdogs” have come a long way, adapting through it all.
Starting with four people, the 15-member strong company now operates out of an office in Mumbai. Its first hire, Sankesh More, is now the co-founder and creative director, while Chavan serves as the CEO of underDOGS Studio.
Creating for others and the mobile game boom
In its early years, the B2B gaming studio adapted Unity—a real-time game development platform—to ride the mobile gaming wave in India. It created 2D and 3D games for various clients and studios, including Games2win India.
“Before then, only bigger studios used to have access to Google Play and the App Store. But once independent studios adapted Unity, anyone could make a good game in a few months and publish it on those platforms,” he says.
Suddenly, high-end graphics—the kind that comes with a lot of money—weren’t a priority anymore. One could make a game with polished gameplay and create a community around it. Taking advantage of this democratisation, underDOGS created Skatelander in 2015—a breakthrough year for indie gaming studios—which featured in 130 countries across Google Play and App Store.
For this original IP, underDOGS received nominations at gaming conferences such as Casual Connect Singapore and Casual Connect USA, where it also bagged its first international publisher deal with the Dutch gaming company Spill Games.
This initial success helped the gaming studios bag brand deals, including interest from digital agencies and movie production houses.
“We took advantage of this momentum and amplified the B2B side, making over 250 games across different verticals for different people, including building gamified simulations for companies like Mercedes,” shares Chavan, adding that the B2B operations served over 100 clients.
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Making Mukti
Skatelander’s success made Chavan and More realise the company was ready for the next step: making games for PCs and consoles.
Around 2017-19, the team worked on pre-production and created a 10-minute demo of its largest indie undertaking, Mukti—a first-person narrative exploration adventure. However, it shelved the project in 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic.
“During that time, surviving in the industry took priority. Hyper-casual games (easy-to-play games that are usually free and have very minimal user interfaces) were dominating the market, and we started making games for some of the biggest hyper-casual game publishers, like Lion Studios and Crazy Labs,” says Chavan.
In 2021, the Indian wing of Unreal—a 3D game developer platform by Epic Games— pushed promising projects by Indian gaming studios to receive grants, and underDOGS ended up with a $25,000 grant.
The company used the grant on a cinematic teaser for Mukti and a 30-minute vertical slice—a fully functional and self-contained segment of the game—and pitched it to Sony Interactive Entertainment the following year.
After a year and a half of negotiations, the world’s largest gaming company greenlit Mukti in November 2023 as part of its incubator programme, India Hero Project, and its productions began in February 2024.
<figure class="image embed" contenteditable="false" data-id="577697" data-url="https://images.yourstory.com/cs/2/94a03c40169611f0b4b0c5b62b4900c2/HighresScreenshot001391-1753445337355.png" data-alt="Mukti screen grab" data-caption="
A screenshot from Mukti. Source: underDOGS Studio
” align=”center”> A screenshot from Mukti. Source: underDOGS Studio
“In the game, players will play a character, trying to figure out the whereabouts of someone missing. You will solve various types of puzzles to uncover the truth of that missing person’s journey,” he explains, adding that the game has been created for a global audience.
In the early ideation days, in 2018, Chavan and his team were trying to understand human trafficking and reached out to an NGO to converse with a few victims. “That was a helpful experience. While we did not take any direct inspiration or borrow from their tragic experiences, it gave us context for the pain and journey such victims go through,” he says.
According to Chavan, Mukti will have elements that no other Indian gaming industry has used to date, which will be revealed in the game’s trailer—expected to be released on August 15, 2025. Though expected to release this year, the studio has not finalised a date.
Funding
In 2022, underDOGS raised $175,000 in a pre-seed round led by Ventana Ventures and Tulsea Media to develop the remaining original projects in its pipeline.
“Working with underDOGS has been a rewarding experience—its creativity and commitment to quality are unmatched. With Mukti, it is breaking boundaries and delivering something truly innovative to the gaming world. We are excited to see how its vision continues to push the medium forward,” says Akash Menon, Head of Sports and Gaming at Tulsea.
The team is pragmatic about its strengths. With previous experience in theatre—Chavan (acting and directing plays) and More (technical aspects of production)—the studio focuses a lot more on storytelling and narrative-driven games.
The startup functioned as a B2B company for the first seven years of its journey, and broke even around 2018, with an annual recurring revenue of nearly Rs 1.5 crore.
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The gaming industry in India
Although underDOGS is creating original IPs for PC and consoles, it downgrades these high-resolution games for mobile gaming.
“We are making cross-platform games. We are building those same games for mobile and VR as well… Many companies think of doing the opposite way, but that’s a nightmare,” he says.
Further, the studio is building its games from a transmedia lens—the narrative can be extended to other storytelling mediums. Some recent examples—the TV show, The Last of Us (2023), and the movie, Uncharted (2022).
The company has already had conversations with a few production houses interested in Mukti’s IP. “Large movie production houses are also paying attention to producing games because of the larger profit margins. A movie can, at most, make a Rs 2,000 crore profit, which we saw with Pushpa. On the other hand, a game like Black Myth: Wukong made roughly Rs 10,000 crore within the first month,” explains Chavan.
While there is a trend of derivative projects in the Indian gaming industry, Chavan believes it is a necessary step to overcome. “As a gaming studio, you need to learn through imitation first.”
According to an IMAARC report, the Indian gaming industry, with a market size of $4.3 billion, is expected to reach $15.2 billion by 2033. With premium PC and console gaming on the rise, underDOGS aims to capture a meaningful share of that emerging segment.
“Our goal is to be the top narrative game studios from India in the next 3 years, as the market matures and global demand for culturally rooted stories grows,” he says.
Edited by Suman Singh
