Hitwicket, India’s top rated multiplayer cricket strategy gaming app, announced important additions to the engineering and product divisions. Eve Chang has been appointed as the Product Head and Krishnakanth Mallik Chaganti has been named Vice President – Engineering with immediate effect.
At Hitwicket, Eve will be responsible for planning the product roadmap, assisting in production management, mentoring the team, and will execute live operations with more engaging and entertaining content for Hitwicket fans.
In a career spanning 15 years across 3 continents, Eve was the product owner of Temple Run & Temple Run 2 (Imangi) with over a Billion downloads. She comes with an expertise of handling an Indian user base of 50M+. Eve was the product owner of Bejeweled Blitz during her time at Electronic Arts (EA). Prior to that, she has worked with Activision on the Call of Duty Online with Tencent as the publisher, where she was the producer and handled everything from production, communication and oversaw legal approvals and user testing.
Eve is a gaming industry veteran, experienced with a wide range of production and publishing needs. She specializes in a player-first holistic approach to mobile game products, from establishing and defining games’ market and player opportunities, to best practices for production to leverage the community and K factor for publishing requirements. Eve has a BFA from California College of the Arts. She started with art outsourcing and now has been in Video Games development, publishing for over a decade, with many AAA projects under her sleeve. AAA classification is used to categorise games produced and distributed by mid-sized or major publishers such as Activision & Dreamworks. She has a proven track record of high performance on games in terms of engagement, retention and monetization.
In his new role, Krishnakanth will be heading the Engineering function and will focus on building high performance technology teams that are geared towards supporting the roadmaps of the games as well as building the next generation of games tech. With more than 10+ years of experience in the craft of game development, Krishnakanth is a tech leader/entrepreneur and was most recently the cofounder and CTO of Playmat. He has developed components or tools that powered games from open source community projects to AAA console and mobile titles. Some of the games that he has worked on include Tetris, Disney’s Epic Mickey 2: The power of two – WiiU, Disney’s Infinity – WiiU, Heroes of Dragon Age, Monopoly Slots, Bejeweled Stars and Plants Vs Zombies. Krishnakanth holds a Master’s degree in Computer science specializing in games development from University of Southern California.
Hitwicket Superstars is a multiplayer cricket strategy game that allows gamers to go beyond playing cricket and don the hat of a Team manager.
Founded by Keerti Singh and Kashyap Reddy, the game is played across 100 countries. Headquartered in Hyderabad, Hitwicket is among the top 10 global sports startups recognised by HYPE, UK for their AI powered game engine. It was also a part of the Google Game Accelerator programme in 2018 and was recognised as a “High-growth potential” gaming startup. It is not only the highest-rated cricket game (4.5 on Play Store) but also tops the rating charts in the overall gaming category. The game is available to download for free on all major platforms such as Play Store, App Store Realme and Samsung stores.
Kashyap Reddy, Cofounder, Hitwicket, said, “We are delighted to welcome Eve and Mallik to the team as we strive to make the first global Esports IP from India. They are a perfect fit as their varied expertise will have an immediate effect in growing the momentum of Hitwicket multi-fold. Eve and Mallik’s experience in gaming particularly in growth of mobile games will help Hitwicket expand globally. We aim to establish good strong engagement with its players worldwide while maintaining robust live operations and expanding its esports presence.”
Eve Chang, Product Head, Hitwicket, said, “I am thrilled to join the team at such an exciting time. India is a fast growing market and is rapidly becoming a strong mobile gaming developing force for its market and beyond. Cricket has an unparalleled fandom and loyal following worldwide. Hitwicket is founded with the passion for cricket and the love of strategy games. It is a unique product that is a genre disruptor and has had great success and with immense global reach potential.”
Krishnakanth Mallik Chaganti, VP of Engineering, Hitwicket, said, “I am very excited to be a part of Hitwicket’s leadership team and tech innovation plans. I believe Hitwicket Superstars captures the essence and thrill of a cricket match in the most accessible way. The aim is to make Hitwicket the go-to video game for cricket akin to what FIFA is for football. This makes it an easy host to a lot of exciting features and auxiliary systems that will keep players engaged for years. I look forward to bringing my experience to the company and overseeing the technology strategy to drive further growth.”
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