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We recently spoke with Ramprasad (Ram) Rajendran, who along with Deepan Chakravarthy, co-founded HashCube – an India-based developer of gaming applications  for social networks and mobile platforms including Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and the iPhone.  HashCube is the first company to launch out of iAccelerator, a startup assistance program in India run by Freeman Murray who we first interviewed back in April.  During our conversation with Ram, we asked him how HashCube plans to compete in such a crowded space with virtually no barrier to entry, his thoughts on the suspect quality of existing social networking/mobile applications and his experience with iAccelerator.

What is Hashcube and what makes it different from the thousands of other individuals and companies developing applications for social networks?

HashCube is a social gaming company that we started in January 2008. HashCube concentrates on making fun, classical, puzzle-type games on social networks like Facebook, MySpace and the iPhone. We feel that users playing HashCube games should have fun while improving their memory, concentration and logical thinking – a key differentiator for our applications.

What were you doing before Hashcube and what is the story that led to the company’s development?

Deepan had worked in a few startups and I had worked at an MNC and a service company before starting HashCube. Both of us have known each other for 15 years. We were schoolmates and we were interested in puzzles during school days. In our 12th standard we did a bouncing ball game which really got us interested and was our project in our 12th standard. The passion and interest continued which formed the basis for starting HashCube.

What are some of HashCube’s largest successes with respect to applications that the company has developed thus far?

Our major milestones have been to increase the userbase from 0 users to 300K users and our goal is to increase the userbase to 10 Million users. Acquiring users at low costs through efficient campaign management and  efficient analytics tracking and management are things that we are proud of.

HashCube’s applications are available on numerous platforms including Facebook, MySpace, Orkut and the iPhone.  Which of these platforms do you feel offers the greatest opportunity?  And within these platforms, what is the target market for your applications?

We feel that Facebook, MySpace and iPhone offer the greatest opportunity. With respect to the maturity of the platforms, Facebook and iPhone are doing pretty well and MySpace is slowly catching up. We have applications on Facebook, Myspace, Orkut and Friendster. But Facebook is where we have the greatest number of users.

With the incredible number of competitive applications constantly being developed for these platforms, how does HashCube “keep up”?  More specifically, in a rapidly evolving market, how do you identify the right application to build and how does time-to-market factor into your decision making process?

We believe HashCube has a classical gaming niche which differentiates us from existing players. By making classical-type games easily accessible to people in fun, better and improved forms we stay unique. Initially intuition helps in deciding what to develop and analytics help us build upon those initial ideas. We iterate heavily so it takes less time to get the initial version out. From there on it is we rely on analytics and user feedback to guide us.

Some have said that the proliferation of free/low-priced applications available for these platforms has lowered the bar on overall quality.  Do you agree or disagree?  And how does HashCube ensure quality while also making applications available for free or for very little money?

It is definitely true that the number of applications are on the rise and the quality of some of them aren’t great.  This is a product of the fact that it takes little to create faddish applications that can produce huge traction in their initial days, but the interest in these applications generally die down quickly. Classical puzzle games like sudoku, dotgame and loop the loop have no death and are liked by all generations. We spend more than 60% of the time iterating and improving existing games.

While on the topic, what is HashCube’s business model if the applications are available for free or for very little charge?  Was this a significant hurdle for you to leap during your recent fundraising process?

We generate revenue through advertisements. Social cash is another revenue stream which will be incorporated in our games within a couple of weeks. We feel that traction and revenue were the important things that helped us in the fundraising process.

By the way, congratulations on recently receiving investment from iAccelerator.  Can you tell us a bit about the fundraising process?  What was your approach and how long did it take for you to identify, and later secure funding from iAccelerator?

Thanks. We met Freeman during a barcamp where we came to know about iAccelerator. We later applied where a standard application has to be submitted explaining our idea along with other things. It took about a month before we got our results. We felt getting incubated at IIM would help us in honing our thoughts and our ideas and it would be a great experience working with other like minded startups around.

What is iAccelerator’s current role in HashCube’s development?  How has having an external investor changed the company?

iAccelerator provides mentorship. In the last one month we have met with a lot mentors who have been successful entrepreneurs. Listening to them and pitching to them has improved our idea into a more presentable format and also provided us confidence to pitch our business idea in future. There are 10 more startups in iAcelerator getting incubated along with us. There is a lot of knowledge shared within these startups that has helped us tone our business and technological challenges.

What’s next for HashCube?  What can we be on the look out for from the company in terms of future applications or beyond?

Our mission is to make education a fun. We want to make educational games for popular platforms.

Finally, any words of advice for entrepreneurs looking to raise funding for their own initiatives?  Any targeted advice for those in India?

Entrepreneurs in India should look for programs like iAccelerator which help them create and polish their ideas and products.

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