WORD WALAS

They are in a bit of an alphabet soup but like true cyber-innovators, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the makers of Scrabulous, are ready to bounce back

They are in a bit of an alphabet soup but like true cyber-innovators, Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the makers of Scrabulous, are ready to bounce back
When scrabulous was taken off Facebook in July after Hasbro Inc threatened legal action against its makers, fans moaned in protest. “Save Scrabulous” clubs sprouted on the Web and furious players called Hasbro Inc, the company which has a copyright on the original game Scrabble, fascist. Brothers Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, who had posted an adapted version of Scrabble on Facebook, had an answer—an 11-letter synonym for Scrabulous, Wordscraper. The reception to the new game was the stuff of social networking bliss: users offered praise and panned the name, and the Agarwalla brothers answered online, promising changes and thanking the players. In a few days, Wordscraper had spawned numerous new fan groups and a “board design workshop”.

Back in their house in south Kolkata, the brothers seem a little tentative about the legal wrangles but nonetheless pleased by the support they have got. “It (Hasbro’s lawsuit against the brothers) was a setback. But users are still accessing and playing the game everywhere else,” says Jayant, the younger of the brothers.
Three years after they launched their online word game, Agarwallas are now perhaps India’s only bona fide Internet celebrities. Last year, they posted their game on Facebook. The result: a mind-boggling five lakh users daily. The game has been added on 8,40,000 pages on the Internet, with users outside the US and Canada continuing to play the game online. Through the little attachment ads displayed with the game, they have been earning $25,000 or Rs 1 lakh a month over the past few months. Rumour has it that Hasbro Inc, before taking legal action, had offered the Agarwallas something close to $10million to buy out Scrabulous, but the proposal was turned down. “But you know, it’s never been about making money. Our motivation was to launch a free online word game worldwide that no Indian has ever done in the past. And surprisingly, we succeeded. Since Scrabulous is not only free, it can be played off-line and each game can be played over a long period of time, say over three or even 10 days,” says Jayant.

The Agarwalla brothers, in some sense, are true cyber innovators; they belong to the Internet that has killed the copyright. Where every idea is up for change and improvisation. In fact, argue experts, it would have made more business sense for Hasbro to jump onto the Scrabulous bandwagon. The brothers don’t want to venture into such speculation. They would rather tell you that Scrabulous started when they found themselves on the wrong end of the copyright battle.

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“We are big fans of Scrabble and would play it online for hours. But suddenly a free online word game website, Quadplex, became a pay site. So, we then launched our own online word game site, BingoBinge, and later changed it to Scrabulous. That was in 2006. Then in June 2007, egged on by a user, we posted Scrabulous on Facebook, and in no time, hundreds of thousands of users became fans,” says Jayant.
The fascination with wordplay and the Web began in the summer of 1995. The two youngsters living in south Kolkata’s Minto Park locality received their dream gift from an uncle — a personal computer and an Internet connection. “That was it. We took to online games like anything and developed a knack for chess. As children, chess was our favourite game, and we also had a thing for word games,” says Jayant.

Rajat and Jayant, both commerce graduates, belong to an affluent joint family in south Kolkata. Their father runs a manufacturing business, dealing in window grills and razor blades, while their mother is a housewife. Apart from their world of online games and Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant together run a web development and outsourcing firm called RJ Softwares. Their next project is developing a separate online game and gaming community, which will exclusively cater to underprivileged children from all over the world.
And how is life outside office? “We are regular guys. We usually catch a movie on weekends, and enjoy watching thrillers, suspense, and comedy films. My brother enjoys squash and swimming while I’m more into table tennis, chess, and PC games like Unreal Tournament. I’m also a huge fan of Twenty20 cricket,” Jayant says, a pass-out of St Xavier’s College, like his elder brother.
Scrabble? “Oh yes, we still play the game for hours,” says Jayant. “Only, Rajat is better at it. But I’m getting there.”

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