Virtual creatures

Tumkur startup Venture Next earns Rs 10 lakh a month by creating virtual creatures

 

 

 

 

Having imaginary friends may not be all that bad after all. A startup in Tumkur — an industrial town near Bangalore — that sells fox-like creatures in the virtual world of Second Life has hit pay dirt. The weird-but cute looking creatures called Fennux have been generating revenue of over Rs 10 lakh every month.

Second Life is a computer simulated world created by Linden Lab where real users lead a virtual life. "We didn't know this was possible until we started doing contract work for an American technology customer," said Sathvik Vishwanath, the founder of VentureNext, which creates the Fennux.

There are about 1.2 million Fennux in the virtual world that are fed and bred by owners, or simply let loose. A bowl of feed costs Rs 60 in the Second Life marketplace.

"We are the only company that makes the feed," said Vishwanath. Each Fennux can give birth up to nine times and has a 45-day breeding cycle. Rare breeds of Fennux can even be auctioned. "For all these years, we've made a comfortable living by selling these breeding pets," said Vishwanath, who started VentureNext in 2009.

In 2013, Second Life turned a decade old. While there are many who make a living in the real world by trading on Second Life, they are an exception in India.

Last month, about 4,000 users logged in from India, spending a total of more than 67 thousand hours in Second Life. Linden Lab said transactions worth over $3.2 billion (Rs 19,400 crore) were carried out among the nearly million monthly active users.

However, Second Life's popularity has been dwindling. In February, Linden Lab announced a next generation virtual world modelled on Second Life and fans are hoping for a revival.

"If you said Second Life, I'd say yawn. Who cares about Second Life anymore," asked Alok Kejriwal, the CEO of online gaming company Games2Win. With casual gaming on social networks like Facebook and mobile gaming picking up fast, Second Life has lost much of its early charm.

"It was Second Life, then came Zynga, Candy Crush and so on. Tides turn so fast in the online gaming world," said Kejriwal. "If you spend the same amount of effort mining bitcoins, you'd probably do better." And that's exactly what VentureNext's Vishwanath is up to these days.

"I'm not able to constantly develop new things for Fennux because of my new startup. I'll keep it running though," he said. Last week, his startup UnoCoin which lets users buy and sell bitcoins raised $250,000 (Rs 1.5 crore) from Barry Silbert's Bitcoin Opportunity Corp.

"When one door shuts, others open," said Vishwanathan. "That's just how the internet is."