Rohith Bhat: The Udupi Entrepreneur Who Built a Global Gaming Studio Without Leaving Home

Long before "Tier-2 city startup" became a familiar phrase in Indian tech circles, Rohith Bhat was already building one — quietly, from Udupi, starting with a Mac-only software company whose very first client was Apple itself.

From a Mac Software Shop to a Gaming Studio

Rohith Bhat founded Robosoft Technologies in 1996, choosing an unusual specialisation for the time: software development exclusively for the Mac operating system, at a moment when Windows dominated Indian IT services almost entirely. That bet paid off in a way few could have predicted — Apple Inc. became Robosoft's first customer, a relationship that helped establish the young Udupi company's credibility in a niche most Indian software firms weren't touching.

Bhat studied at N.M.A.M. Institute of Technology, completing his engineering degree there before going on to build what would become three separate companies over the following decade. In 2007, he founded Global Delight, a software company focused on photo, audio and video utility apps. A year later, in November 2008, he founded 99Games Online Private Limited as a gaming-focused offshoot of Robosoft — originally built to explore India's nascent mobile app ecosystem, before growing into something considerably bigger.

Building Games People Actually Played

99Games started as a subsidiary of Robosoft before being formally restructured into a separate, independent entity in 2015, sharpening its focus specifically on mobile gaming. The studio built its reputation on two fronts at once: licensed movie tie-in games for the Indian market, including Dhoom:3 The Game and Sultan: The Game (both based on Yash Raj Films properties), and original intellectual property aimed at a global audience, most notably Star Chef — a restaurant-simulation game the company describes as India's most successfully monetised original game franchise, later followed by Star Chef 2.

Over time, 99Games published 22 game titles in total, crossing more than 100 million downloads globally. To fund this growth, the company raised a combined total in the range of $12-16 million across multiple rounds from investors including Kalaari Capital, Ascent Capital and Dream Incubator — sourced across both the Robosoft group and 99Games specifically at different points, with reported figures varying slightly by source.

By 2018, 99Games had grown enough to move out of Robosoft's original campus and build its own dedicated office in Udupi, at Mahalaxmi Towers near the old taluk office circle — designed, fittingly, around the aesthetic of its most successful game, Star Chef, so that employees quite literally worked inside a space themed after the world they built on screen. At the time, the studio employed more than 100 people in Udupi alone, out of a combined Robosoft-Global Delight-99Games workforce that had earlier been reported at around 450 employees.

In one of the more significant, if quietly reported, outcomes for a Karnataka-origin tech company, Robosoft Technologies was acquired by TechnoPro Holdings of Japan on 10 August 2021, in a deal reported to be worth over $100 million. Robosoft had, by that point, built a substantial client roster spanning Yash Raj Films, Viacom18, Sony, NDTV, Times of India, Conde Nast, Disney, Logitech, PopCap, Vodafone and National Geographic, and had developed more than 1,400 apps across consumer and enterprise mobility.

Rather than exit entirely, Bhat has described choosing to focus his energy specifically on 99Games following Robosoft's acquisition, having found — in his own words, from a 2021 interview — that running three separate, simultaneously scaling businesses had become genuinely difficult to sustain as a single founder.

Building the Ecosystem Around Him, Not Just His Own Company

Bhat's role in coastal Karnataka's tech scene extends beyond his own companies. He serves as founding president of TiE Mangaluru, the local chapter of The Indus Entrepreneurs, a global network supporting entrepreneurship — a role that places him alongside other regional tech leaders, including Praveen Kumar Kalbhavi of Novigo Solutions (Mangalore) and Ram Acharya of Global Delight (Udupi), on the chapter's founding team. He has also spoken publicly as an industry anchor for Mangaluru's technology cluster, describing the region's emergence as a technology hub built on its existing strengths in healthcare and education.

The Takeaway

Rohith Bhat's career runs against a fairly common assumption in Indian tech — that a globally competitive product company has to be built in Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR or Mumbai to succeed. Robosoft's Apple-approved beginnings, 99Games' 100-million-download global titles, and a $100-million-plus acquisition by a Japanese conglomerate were all built from Udupi, a coastal Karnataka town better known for its temple town heritage than its technology exports. That, as much as any individual product or deal, is the more interesting part of the story.

Surprising Facts About Rohith Bhat and His Companies

1. Robosoft's first-ever client was Apple Inc. itself — a striking credential for a young Udupi software company in 1996.
2. 99Games built the mobile game for Dhoom:3, one of the most downloaded licensed movie games in India at the time.
3. The company's Udupi office was designed to look like its own hit game, Star Chef, turning the workplace itself into a themed environment.
4. Robosoft was sold to a Japanese company, TechnoPro Holdings, in a deal reported to exceed $100 million — a major exit that received relatively little mainstream attention outside tech circles.
5. Rohith Bhat ran three separate companies in parallel — Robosoft, Global Delight and 99Games — before later choosing to focus primarily on 99Games alone.
6. 99Games' games have crossed 100 million downloads globally, despite the company being based in a town of a few lakh people rather than a metro city.
7. Robosoft's client list included major global names like Disney, Sony, National Geographic and Vodafone, alongside Indian majors like Times of India and Viacom18.
8. Bhat helped found TiE Mangaluru, extending his influence beyond his own businesses into building the region's wider entrepreneurial ecosystem.

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