Ep 44: How Rohith Bhat built an app development powerhouse from small town India

“When Steve Jobs went on the stage in 2008 to announce the App Store, he showed the first 500 apps, and the five of them were built in this building, in Udupi,” Rohith Bhat, founder of Robosoft tells me as I sat down to record this episode of Outliers in Udupi, a small temple town located some 400 kilometres from Bangalore. What’s really exciting about Bhat’s journey is not just having Apple as an old, loyal customer, but how he is transforming Robosoft into a next-generation company that’s now building new gaming apps too. The Star Chef game, for instance, has been downloaded over 20 million times and has earned revenues of nearly $20 million in three years. But it’s been a long, slow and at times frustrating entrepreneurial journey too. And that’s where Bhat is inspired by the Japanese culture and its companies. If you remember the Outliers Podcast with Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu, even he talked about why Indian startups need to emulate the likes of Honda, and not get starry-eyed by looking at the Silicon Valley all the time. Listen in.