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Nikhil Malankar is a 23 year old Indian Entrepreneur who started his journey from GameEon, an Indian game development company. He took an exit from his role as the CEO of GameEon and currently he is running Tell Me Nothing, an entertainment website and is working on his next games under Next Move Digital LLP.
What experiences growing up shaped you into the entrepreneur that you are today?
I believe all of the experiences till date, minor and major, have collectively turned me into the entrepreneur I am today. I started my journey into entrepreneurship about 5 years ago. At the time, I had started a game development company with my friends.
For a very long period of time of about 2 years we weren’t making any money from our games and so we went into offering client services to earn money to fund our games. We worked on all sorts of services ranging from app development, website development, graphic designing and more.
We did that for almost 2 and a half years during which we figured out how to make money through games after we started with worldwide distribution of games. And the exciting part is that the journey hasn’t been over yet. I have transitioned into a new role in my life and am excited for the opportunities lying ahead.
Who were your biggest influences?
Many! I have huge respect for gaming legends like Trip Hawkins, the founder of EA Games for pioneering the world of gaming. Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind Mario is a personal inspiration for me and his back story of how he came up with the idea of Mario is simply beautiful. Also, Tim Sweeney, the founder of Epic Games and creator of one of the most powerful game engines of all time, Unreal Engine.
And speaking from business world I love the drive and passion of Mark Cuban and Gary Vaynerchuk. I think these two define the work ethics and passion that entrepreneurs should have. And of course, Shah Rukh Khan, the King Khan of Bollywood. He has come from an extremely humble background and his journey as a actor and a successful businessman is just marvellous!
What are you working on?
Currently I am working on my entertainment website Tell Me Nothing (http://www.tellmenothing.com) which has a lot of cool content and we also interview popular people. We also interviewed Alejandro Rioja, the founder of this website (http://tellmenothing.com/2017/02/02/alejandro-rioja-entrepreneur-flux/), Mahbod Moghadam, founder of Everipedia and many more. (http://tellmenothing.com/2017/01/12/mahbod-moghadam-journey-everipedia/)
Apart from this, I am working on a horror game with a small team. The trailer for this game will be coming out in a few weeks time. I also just wrapped up writing a technical book on game development that is coming out in month of May.
What was the spark of your project?
I had bought the domain tellmenothing.com back in 2014 just as a fun way to write about random things on the internet. Initially I had no intention to run it as a serious full time blog but eventually because of the content it started getting good amount of traffic and to add to that I really loved writing about a variety of topics as well as interact with fellow entrepreneurs. So, for that reason I decided to grow this further and today we have 5 dedicated full time writers for the site and growing.
Also, since my previous company was a gaming company I always had the urge to go back to gaming after my exit from GameEon and so I find it really compelling to go back to my roots.
How is your website different and unique?
I think the name of my website itself is cool enough. It is a hummer website and so the name completely suits the purpose. In fact, I was quite shocked that the domain was available when I booked it. Even in 2014 getting a domain name like that was extremely difficult. It is like one of my prized possessions.
Besides, the content that we write on our website is pretty cool and targeted towards various niches which makes it reach to a wide variety of audience.
Who are your (potential) customers? How do you find them?
Our potential customers are people who spend most of their time on social media, primarily Facebook. We target people who are in the age group of 17 to 23 years male and female who like sarcastic content.
We use Facebook advertising to reach our target audience because that is one of the most effective ways of advertisement in today’s times.
Give the readers the best entrepreneurship advice you have.
Entrepreneurship is truly a luxury. Invest your time in building your product or service and put as much money back into your business as possible. Work hard and be true to the vision you started with.
Which tools do you use on daily basis?
Facebook Ads, Jetpack Site Stats, WordPress, Unity Game Engine, Photoshop CC
Teach us something about social media
Social media can be a huge boost for your product/service if you know exactly who your target audience is. Facebook has all your data and so, as a business, you can make the most out of it.
I grew my personal page (https://www.facebook.com/TellMeNothingdotcom) from a mere 600 likes to over 24,000 likes in a span of 1 month by creating targeted ads. If you are looking to grow your social presence immensely then use these target audience with demography of India. You’ll get a lot of reach for a very small budget.
Where do you see yourself and your product in a couple years?
After my exit from my previous gaming company I have gained a significant amount of experience to navigate the gaming space and so I will be using this experience to build my next gaming company that will be focused on creating good quality games and I see Tell Me Nothing grow and get an amazing Alexa rank of under 10,000 globally. That would be really cool!
What is the end goal?
My end goal is to be known as a successful game developer.
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