He started his first business at 14 and served clients like Pepsi. Here’s what he learned.

Zaki Mahomed started his first company at the age of 14, helping build websites for big brands like Pepsi. He left Karachi shortly afterwards and moved to Singapore to study engineering. But the experience convinced him that entrepreneurship was a risk worth taking.

In his third year at the National University of Singapore, Zaki started TimeSvr – a portal that helped people hire and manage virtual assistants. “It was my first real startup,” he laughs.

The young engineer ran the firm as CEO from 2008 to 2010, but soon itched to do something different. He relinquished control to a co-founder to start a gaming company.

Zaki’s next startup, Game Ventures, sought to tap into the burgeoning social gaming space. It raised approximately US$1 million in funding but initially started out of a small apartment in Singapore.

“Our focus was social sports games. The problem with games is that you have to keep making new ones. Sports is different because you don’t have to make new ones over and over again. You can concentrate on incremental changes,” he outlines.

One game the team built was Pokerrama, a social game based on poker. It was acquired for an undisclosed sum by gaming behemoth Ubisoft, the company behind titles like Assassin’s Creed and Prince of Persia.

“The exit served as validation – we knew how to make games,” recalls Zaki.

Screenshot of Howzat

Uncertain future

Game Ventures enjoyed other successes. Howzat, its game based on cricket, grew to 6 million monthly active users at its peak. The game had tremendous traction in India, and also signed partnership deals with media giants like ESPN.

But trouble struck. In early 2012, Facebook started clamping down on social gaming. Gaming startups were left with an uncertain future: either pivot to mobile or seek a buyer. Game Ventures was eventually bought out by Junglee, an Indian gaming company, and the deal was finalized by late 2013.

“We had a lot of fun, we built a great team and imported talent from all parts of the world. Now it was time to move on,” explains Zaki.

At the same time, one of Zaki’s investors and mentors, Mark Organ, gave him a call and asked him to join Influitive, a new B2B marketing company he had just started.

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