The Quraishi brothers create free games that spread AIDS awareness. They
also donate some of their profits
Maitreyee Handique, maitreyee.h@livemint.com
New Delhi
As struggling students in the late 1980s, the Quraishi twins sold extra
leather jackets to supplement pocket money. That’s how the first roots of
capitalism and entrepreneurship took hold in Hilmi and Subhi Quraishi in the
transforming Soviet Union.
While pursuing their Master’s degree in applied mathematics at Moscow State
University, the twins would often be contacted by commersants-tough-talking
men who computed numbers like “calculators”-some of whom went on to become
leading bankers in Russia.
They would visit the twins’ Profsoyuznaya Street flat, turn on the bathroom
taps to drown out conversation from eavesdropping neighbours, and haggle. In
exchange for the black-market goods, they’d leave a couple of Russian
roubles.
More than a decade later, the Quraishis, founders of a mobile gaming and
educational company, are infusing a subtle socialistic spirit into their
business. They are the founders of the Rs4 crore ZMQ Software Systems, based
in New Delhi. Besides creating free games that spread awareness about AIDS
prevention, the Quraishis donate a portion of the profits to social
development. Next month, ZMQ launches its first football-based game called
AIDS Penalty Shoot-out.
Their AIDS games function largely like any other-except they come bearing
explicit social messages. In one called “Mission Messenger,” an African
teenager drops condoms in villages as he’s chased by a pulsating AIDS virus.
Walking into a café in New Delhi’s Connaught Place, footsteps in sync, the
twins wear identical glasses and identical beaded red-ribbon pins, symbols
in the fight against AIDS. Yet, apart from their thick, bushy eyebrows, you
can’t tell they are brothers, born just five minutes apart.
The business philosophy, they take turns to explain, is simple. “Instead of
spending on advertisement, we decided to get into producing social games,”
says Hilmi .
“If a 50-paise drink can be sold for Rs10,” Subhi adds heartily, “why can’t
we package knowledge that costs Re1 and sell it for Rs1.50?”
ZMQ is named in honour of the founders’ father, Zahir Masood Quraishi, a
Left-leaning academician. In the fast-growing $50 million (Rs220 crore)
mobile gaming industry, the market for social gaming is small, at a mere
Rs10 crore, but the Quraishis are betting on it. ZMQ began designing
low-level, easy-to-operate games for companies such as health-care firm Dr
Morepen to gain market access and gradually moved to larger outsourcing
contracts for mobile networks, such as Beelinethe second-largest mobile
operator in Russia, and Texas-based software company ClickCE.com.
In December 2005, the Quraishis launched their first easy-to-manoeuvre
mobile game under the name, Freedom HIV/AIDS. “Mobile phones are more
accessible today with falling prices,” says Hilmi. “Our target was to design
low-end games that would reach out to a maximum number of people.”
Since 1998, they have designed nearly 50 mobile games, of which 12 are
non-commercial, and directly related to AIDS. “The first game we did for the
Delhi State AIDS Control Society cost nearly Rs18 lakh,” explains Hilmi.
“But since 60% of our profit comes from our e-learning division, we decided
to go ahead with it,” Subhi says.
The Freedom HIV/AIDS game reached some 12 million users when it was launched
in 2005, on 1 December-World AIDS Day. Seven months later, it reached 32
million as different Indian operators ran the games on their networks.
The brothers say people initially didn’t understand why they distributed for
free. But the strategy proved to be a marketing boon as the other side of
their business, e-learning, took off. ZMQ has designed educational courses
for NGOs such as OneWorld, a nonprofit organization focused on international
issues, and Johns Hopkins University, where ZMQ also developed communication
material on HIV discrimination among youth.
For its upcoming game, AIDS Penalty Shoot-out, ZMQ worked with HIVOS (the
Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries), a Dutch NGO,
and various mobile operators. The game is set to reach four million mobile
phone users in the African markets of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.
Hilmi recently visited Nairobi, Kenya, to obtain a first-hand impression for
content development. He recounted spending time in two slums and said the
social venture still has a steep learning curve.
“We don’t want to charge for the ideas. We only want to cover our labour
costs,” he says. Subhi offers a different explanation. “It stops us from
being a slave to technology”.
In September, former US President Bill Clinton invited the pair to the
Clinton Global Initiative conclave in New York, which attempts to tackle
problems like poverty with information technology.
The twins feel their novel approach-offering free mobile gaming downloads to
spread a social message-could continue to help the company grow.
ZMQ plans to expand its e-learning business in eastern Europe, but before
that, the twins want to launch an NGO that can sustain their AIDS programme.
“If you see the profits from the social sector,” Hilmi said, “it has the
potential of becoming bigger than commercial gaming.”