Turning $1,000 into Indonesia’s #1 game company

Gabby Dizon

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With a windfall from their father, brothers Anton and Rokimas Soeharyo built the most successful mobile game dev't company in Indonesia

Gabby DizonWhat would you do with an unexpected $ 1,000 cash windfall?

Most people would probably buy an expensive item or take a vacation with the money. Others would put the money in the bank and save it for a rainy day.

Brothers Anton and Rokimas Soeharyo of Indonesia are not like most people. Faced with a windfall of $ 1,000 each from their father in 2009, they went ahead and built what is currently Indonesia’s most successful mobile game development company, Touchten Games.

Anton is the CEO and COO of the Roki the now 5-year old Touchten Games, the which currently has 20 employees and based in the Thamrin area of ​​downtown Jakarta.

Their office is cozy and exudes a creative vibe, and when I visited the company was feeding off the buzz generated by their latest game, Amazing Cupid – a game that Anton says is a “tribute” gameplay-wise to Dong Nguyen’s Flappy Bird, with elements of Snapchat and a Valentine theme. Touchten released the game a few days before Dong Nguyen took down Flappy Bird from the App Store and received a lot of attention as a result, being noticed by the international press technology such as Techcrunch and Huffington Post .

{Source} <blockquote class = “twitter-tweet” lang = “en”> <p> If Snapchat spawned Flappy Bird And A Demon Love Child, It Would Be Amazing Cupid <a href = “http://t.co/ vmGSke4CXX “> http://t.co/vmGSke4CXX </a> by <a href=”https://twitter.com/CatherineShu”>catherineshu </a> </ p> & mdash; TechCrunch (TechCrunch) <a href=”https://twitter.com/TechCrunch/statuses/432839903169093632″> February 10, 2014 </a> </ blockquote> <script src = async “// platform.twitter.com /widgets.js “charset =” utf-8 “> </ script> {/ source}

Touchten found early success as a company when Reviews their first game, Sushi Chain was released on Apple’s iOS App Store in December 2009 Sushi Chain was a restaurant management sim that took 3 months to make-and broke even after just two months of sales on the App Store. This encouraged them to look for investors to grow the company and hire additional developers to grow the team.

Founders.  From left to right, Touchten's founders - Rokimas Soeharyo (COO), Dede Indrapurna (CTO), Anton Soeharyo (CEO).  Photo courtesy of Gabby Dizon

However, in the middle of fund raising the company Suffered an unexpected setback. A UK-based publisher sent a legal notice Touchten claiming that they had infringed on the copyright of one of the publisher’s existing games. While UNTRUE, Apple sided with the UK-based publisher and removed Touchten’s most popular game and its primary source of revenue from the App Store.

The setback not only dimmed Touchten’s fundraising process but also threatened the very existence of the company. However, an Indonesian venture capital group called Ideosource went ahead and invested in the Touchten, believing in the brothers’ resilience and ability to create more hit games in the future. The investment Gave Touchten a new lease on life and-provided enough capital to grow the company and make new games.

2013 has proven to be Touchten’s best year yet. The company released a new game called Ramen Chain, which was the spiritual successor to Sushi Chain and has the player managing a ramen restaurant. The game has been downloaded more than one million times, and over 70,000 users play the game on a weekly basis. The company also moved into game publishing and released 2 games made by a fellow Indonesian company, Tinker Games. To cap off a busy year, Touchten successfully raised a fresh round of funding from another VC, CyberAgent Ventures.

Making games for a living is never an easy task. The industry is notoriously unstable, with new and established companies alike going out of business every year, and the Flappy Bird phenomenon is a reminder that we never know what players actually want. However, mobile games alone is a $ 12 billion industry globally and still Rapidly growing, the which means smart and resilient developers like Anton and Roki will continue to pursue their dreams and reach for the sky. – Rappler.com

Gabby Dizon has been making games since 2003 and is fascinated about entrepreneurship and game development, especially in Southeast Asia.

 

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