AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAD NOT COME
My experiences of starting and running a Gamification-based Training Company
When I reflect back on the company I started a year ago, I naturally tend to look at it with rose-tinted glasses. However, when I isolate the individual events and zoom into each one of them, I become more aware of the shortcomings, and the lessons it taught me. When life offers up a mixed bag of successes and failures at a dizzying speed and you can’t quite tell one from the other at that time, I call it running a company.
The company was called Flow Reci Media Private Limited. The vision was to improve upon the idea of linear videos and turn them into interactive ones, which did more than just play and pause. We created an online platform where people could create their own interactive videos.
I have been convinced that learning is, undeniably more effective when there is engagement and the communication is a two-way process. This led us to shift gears to offline gamification model. We were keen on converting every transactional corporate training into an interactive gamified learning experience. Ample research in this field has established that gamification develops the cognitive ability of the players, enables them to innovate at their workplace, and fosters a new way of thinking.
From Domain Expertise to Running a Business: The very different ball games
As the co-founder, I was involved in every decision regarding both the business developments and the actual operational elements, including developing the products and services. However, my role mainly pertained to product ideation and evangelizing it in the market.
Scripting, directing and conceptualising our first interactive video, The Considerate Indian, featuring many social issues to elicit reactions from people, was an engrossing challenge. For this, I had to draw from my previous experience of creating videos from scratch and my trainings as a journalist.
When gamifying content for our sales game — The Sales Pitch, we created the content, structure, and game play. The game design ensured complete immersion of the participants into the learning process and worked towards unleashing the potential of gamified learning.
Simultaneously, I had to be hands-on on matters relating to finances and developing new business models as each client came in with their own set of requirements and constraints. I have learned it the hard long way that pricing and calculating profit margins aren’t the only elements of financial planning but to also strategise a multi-modal sales plan that balances cash flow and maximizes sales opportunity.
Bottlenecks
The greatest challenge in running the company was trying to control the extenuating external factors:
- Our first challenge presented itself in the form of a core member of the team — the tech expert and co-founder, who decided to part with the team abruptly.
- Needless to say, the persisting challenge of persuading the potential customers about the benefits of our products gave us the invaluable insight on the gap that exists between the marketer and the market.
- And now I realise how every entrepreneur will vouch for the inherent challenge of enforcing the contracts and receiving timely payments for the trainings delivered.
- I will always look back fondly and proudly on the projects we executed for a consulting company for interactive videos, an NGO for a board game called My Safe House on sensitising children on sexual abuse, or the training with board game on life skills for a company’s new employees. But it would have been nicer still to be paid for these services that we put our passion & effort into!
The Silver Lining
Our product!
The Sales Pitch, a board game to learn fundamental of sales. It was designed to combat the boredom in a classroom training by giving a hands-on experience of solving real-life problems. This game was well received in the market by many organisations like Pink Lemonade, Hello Rooms, Legacy Global Projects among others.
While promoting the game, we conducted workshops in various community forums and incubation spaces across the city. Going to different incubators like Beehive, NSRCEL (IIM-Bangalore), and Open Coffee Club among many others for socialising and pitching ideas were the highlights of this journey that has enriched my experience and given me the learnings no textbook can impart. Many a good thing came off these sessions including the experience of pitching to two angel investors!
Looking back, even though the journey of starting and running a greenfield company was fraught with challenges and the final outcomes were not always as was desired, the experience and specific learnings were enriching, to say the least. I am convinced that the content we developed and the processes we followed were of impressive quality, but the logistics of running a company requires a different level of ingredients. The many a success in our journey, however, has only reinforced my belief that any form of learning can be far more effective if it is interactive and engages the participant. And the entrepreneurial spirit is a gift that gives on giving.
