Beyond Cartoons and Mangoes — A Startup Saga!
This story is no different from many others. Two friends sitting in their 80 sq. ft. room having late night conversations over beer, wanting to conquer the world. What were they doing then? The usual, gathering chillars to buy a smoke and fighting over who should be the one to go get it. And then share that one last drag before they went to bed and continued to dream.
This cycle repeated itself a couple of times until they were frustrated enough with their current jobs or ambitious enough to walk on this uncertain path. They decided to quit their 9 to 5 and started Cartoon Mango. Cool name right! we know :) we’ll get to that later!
Their first #Toons!
Although Hari (CEO, CM) has an educational background in HR and Finance, he always wanted to work in the design field. The creative bug had such a strong itch that he was willing to work with a design studio for free just so that he could learn design. Not just that, of all the places in the world, he picked Goa for this pursuit. Knowing him and his out-of-the-world ideas, we’re not surprised. Although a rumoured story also tells us that an escape from heartbreak led him to the love of his life, Design.
On returning from Goa, he met Vinod (CTO, CM) who was another job-seeker in Bangalore, committed to the life of never moving traffic and the ever-escalating housing crisis. This tech wizard until then had been backpacking through the startup industry, helping companies scale-up their products.
We have two frustrated gentlemen in Bangalore. You hand them beer and cigs at the end of a tiring day, what do you get? Philosophy and a start-up idea! Add a little bit of greenery to the mix, and they start believing it can actually be pulled off. Cartoon Mango thus started on this high note (pun unintended).
Game and the Name
The story behind the name would remind you of an old school actor, overcoming challenges and finally living his childhood dream. Let’s just say Hari spun-off his personal brand into an SEO hack. His college buddies remarked him for a mango shaped head and cartoon like mannerisms. Running a company was his dream. While Hari and Vinod were contemplating names they put Cartoon and Mango together and it just felt right, and so it stuck on.
To make it sound cooler and more startup-like, they soon hired the 3rd person only because he had a Macbook. Aathyish, at that time, was an MBA aspirant- an obvious transition from being an engineering graduate. He joined CM as a UI Designer with no knowledge of UI design because, hey! Macbook means we’re here for serious business. They gradually grew as a UI design company and moved from their 1 BHK to a shared office space in Kasturi Nagar, Bangalore as the team started to grow.
It was time for Cartoon Mango to make a transition to a UX centric company and set themselves apart from 500+ other web design companies in Bangalore. This humongous task was made possible by Ian Crasta (UX Head, CM), 6th addition to the family.
This domain expertise reverberated through their clientele and the team realised that Cartoon Mango needed a new face and an identity that reflected the same.
Here enters Gaurav Hablani (Creative Head, CM). His endeavour to create a brand as quirky and vibrant as the name itself led them to the discovery of their striking green (#enter hex code). A company thrives on its clarity of purpose. The creation of an identity that all departments could resonate to, was the next milestone. He reverse-engineered the offerings of Cartoon Mango into- ‘We Think, We Design, We Code’. This underlying thought led them to imbibe usability and business sensibilities in each of their products. With Gaurav’s inclusion, CM ventured into branding services and developed expertise in product aesthetics.
We’re chatty folks by the way! When you ask us about the inspiration for the neon green and the name, we’ll tell you that we wanted to be like, kaccha-aam. Recall the taste of it on your tongue, that’s what we are!
Raw. Full of ideas. And, you just can’t stop after one.
Climbing the Peak and Onwards
A flair for cricket turned one client into an opportunity, when GSC, a conglomerate, spread internationally in the sports domain, invested in Cartoon Mango. It not just invested in us financially but also adopted us as its subsidiary with a greater mission in mind, to lead the disruption in sports-tech throughout the world. With fresh pair of wings, flying towards new opportunities Cartoon Mango took the first leap towards world domination with IPL Fantasy League.
The year 2017 was about all things cricket. In 2017, they decided to take the cricket fever up a notch and built the IPL fantasy platform for cricket fanatics for whom watching the game isn’t enough. With 1 million+ users playing fantasy cricket on IPL’s platform with an uptime of a whopping 99.99% translating to good-old all nighters, Cartoon Mango took the cricket pitch to the fans’ couch and helped the fans become an active part of the game, and not just a spectator. Without a doubt, this project has been one of Cartoon Mango’s greatest achievements so far but has also brought us closer to designing for a splendid user engagement.
2018 has been kind so far. Cartoon Mango’s teamwork and product execution bagged IPL fantasy(a BCCI venture) for 2nd year in a row along with many other exciting projects due to Cartoon Mango’s approach towards designing experiences and the expertise in providing technology solutions for taking just an idea and transforming it into a product.
With the spirit of expansion and the idea of investing in future technologies, Cartoon Mango has also decided to foray into Data Science and IoT this year.
Cartoon Mango has been climbing up and onwards ever since their inception. Do check out our website to know more about our work and our capabilities.
