Most salespeople try to travel light. Vishal Gondal took the computer. In his telling, the young game maker loaded a desktop, monitor and keyboard into an auto-rickshaw and went to Pepsi’s office in Chembur. He had made a game in which a Pepsi-bottle cannon fired at Coke cans. During the cola wars, this required rather less explanation than a spreadsheet. Here was a rival you could actually shoot at.
He waited, demonstrated it and found an audience. The game became a promotion, with cinema-goers able to play for a Pepsi. His account has the appealing inconvenience of an early technology story: before the seamless demo came several pieces of equipment that had to be physically transported. The customer was nearby. So he went there.
Gondal is now the founder and CEO of GOQii, an investor, a podcast host and a co-founder of nCore Games. His earlier company, Indiagames, reached international markets and eventually became part of Disney’s Indian business. Those names make a respectable introduction. The computer in the rickshaw tells you rather more about how he began.
A computer, a rickshaw and the cola wars
Gondal grew up in Chembur, the Mumbai suburb that remained his base as his business travelled. His father got him a computer early. He taught himself to make games, ran a computer-training operation in his teens and attended R. A. Podar College of Commerce & Economics. He left in the third year. The games had become more absorbing than the qualification.
His early work included games for brands such as Colgate and Kellogg’s. Advertising supplied a customer for an activity he already enjoyed. A game could give a brand several minutes of somebody’s willing attention, which is a rather agreeable arrangement for an advertiser. It also gave the maker a way to keep making.
There was no elaborate origin myth about identifying a market gap. Explaining his start years later, he described wanting to play and create games, then finding that somebody would pay him. The business followed the interest. He founded Indiagames in 1999 with five people, attracting investment from Infinity and IL&FS as internet businesses were acquiring both money and fashionable suffixes.
“I just did it because I love gaming.”
Vishal Gondal, 2018
The phone rings. The business changes.
The dot-com slump made that beginning considerably less comfortable. Gondal has described a difficult period in which Indiagames had to change its model. The route forward involved mobile phones and Nokia. A studio that could make games needed access to the people whose handsets could run them; a handset company needed reasons for customers to use its new capabilities.
This was before the familiar app-store ritual. Mobile operators controlled important routes to the customer. The commercial work included getting games onto those channels and agreeing how the proceeds would be shared. Making a game and selling a game were separate difficulties, and the second one could not be wished away by improving the first.
By November 2004, Gondal was describing relationships with more than 70 mobile operators worldwide. Indiagames used direct arrangements in some markets and partners in places with substantial localisation needs. The vocabulary was technical, but the ambition was easy to follow: a game made in Mumbai ought to be able to find a customer elsewhere.
Spider-Man gets a Mumbai address
At E3 in 2003, Gondal began thinking about what a recognised character might do for the studio’s business. Indiagames already had a collection of mobile arcade titles. A superhero offered an audience that would arrive knowing something about the game before pressing a button. Spider-Man made the shortlist. A meeting with a Marvel representative made the idea less theoretical.
Getting the rights required a deal involving Marvel, Activision and Indiagames. Gondal brought investor Vikram Godse into the negotiations to help establish the studio’s financial credibility. The agreement carried a substantial upfront commitment. Meanwhile, the team began development before the contract was signed, trying to preserve as much of the eventual selling window as possible.
That is a hazardous way to save time. It is also a revealing detail about Gondal’s approach to an opening: the studio was preparing to deliver while it was still trying to secure permission. The mobile Spider-Man game succeeded commercially. A small Indian developer had taken a familiar international character onto a new kind of screen.
Other licences followed, including Bruce Lee and Garfield. Gondal was also making a broader argument for Indian entrepreneurs to develop products and intellectual property. Overseas customers were central to Indiagames’ business. He wanted Indian companies to have more to sell than their availability to do somebody else’s work.
“There is no formula for making money.”
Vishal Gondal, 2005
A business card with divine ambitions
By 2009, Indiagames had more than 300 employees and offices in Mumbai, Beijing, London and Los Angeles. That is a considerable geographical expansion from a five-person beginning. The company also ran a Games on Demand subscription service, billed through broadband providers. In an interview that year, Gondal put its subscriber count at 35,000.
His title for this side of the business was GoD-in-chief. The initials meant Games on Demand, though he seemed quite content to let the joke do a little extra work. His backpack carried the branding. So did his equipment. Some executives put their identity into an annual report; Gondal was prepared to wear his.
A 2008 encounter found him between flights, using his phone for much of his communication and turning to his online network for information. The mixture of personal conversation and business was part of the attraction. His public manner could be informal without the ambitions becoming small. The international offices and operator agreements were quite serious, even if the job title had acquired celestial overtones.
1999
2009
Mumbai · Beijing · London · Los Angeles
A perfectly respectable job. Briefly.
Indiagames eventually entered the Disney UTV business, and Gondal became managing director of its digital division. The remit reached across games and other digital content. For somebody who had started by persuading brands to buy a game, working inside an entertainment company of that scale was quite a change of seating plan.
In April 2013, he announced he would leave at the end of June. His explanation was straightforward: he wanted to pursue entrepreneurship again. He spoke with pride about the team and the integration work. Then he went back to building. GOQii launched in 2014. The corporate title had been a chapter, with an unusually clear closing date.
He also invested in other founders. His interest in Indian product businesses continued beyond the company he had sold. Across interviews, he returned to a consistent preference for ideas with a reason to exist and products that could compete beyond their place of origin. Having secured a larger platform for one venture, he remained interested in the uncertain beginning of the next.
He has named Ronnie Screwvala as a mentor and Vijay Shekhar Sharma as both friend and mentor. He has also praised investor Deepak Shahdadpuri for combining the roles of investor and something close to a co-founder. The pattern is useful: Gondal talks about companies through the people who help them work. The familiar names sit beside the practical business of advice, judgement and a continuing conversation.
The return comes with player feedback
His involvement with nCore Games brought a return to a business he knew well, though familiarity offered no exemption from player criticism. The original FAU-G attracted attention and downloads, then struggled to retain its audience. Gondal later acknowledged a gap between expectations and the game delivered. Many people had anticipated a replacement for PUBG. The product was a different proposition.
FAU-G: Domination took a new route. Dot9 Games developed it, with Nazara Publishing as publishing partner. Dot9’s founders included people who had worked with Gondal at Indiagames. The next attempt drew on old professional connections while changing the game itself. It launched on Android at WAVES in Mumbai on May 1, 2025.
Competitive events followed. By April 2026, Gondal was celebrating the conclusion of FAU-G Bharat League 2.0 in Mumbai. In October, the franchise’s Veer Sangram finals at GamingCon Bharat brought squads together in person; Team 4RC won. The ambition now includes a public stage for players using an Indian-made game. Building that audience requires the patient work that continues after a launch announcement.
Curiosity travels without a job title
There are other ways into Gondal’s interests. He has hosted Beneath the Force and The Awakening Code, asking people about the work and ideas behind their public lives. His announced conversations have included chef Vikas Khanna, voice artist Harish Bhimani and technology executive Manu Kumar Jain. A game maker’s curiosity has found a microphone and a considerably wider guest list.
Away from those conversations, he photographs his travels. A business trip to Japan included sushi, gardens and temples. A Tanzania safari prompted reflections on teamwork and timing as he watched animals and took pictures. He has described the Northern Lights in Iceland as another occasion for seeing things differently. Even an itinerary appears to offer material for the next question.
His career has moved through several technologies and several sets of commercial arrangements. The early Pepsi demo remains a useful scene to keep in view. It contains a maker, an actual product and the effort of getting it in front of somebody. Gondal could not send a convenient link. He brought the computer. There are less cumbersome ways to make an introduction now; earning the next few minutes is still the interesting part.