India’s entertainment industry was comfortable importing innovation. High-end racing simulators came from Europe or East Asia. Arcade owners paid premiums. Consumers experienced advanced hardware, but it was rarely built domestically.
That dependency created an opportunity.
MetaDrive was founded to challenge the assumption that precision motion simulators could not be engineered in India.
The Founders and Early Resistance
Manish Kumar Malik and Chaitanya Malik began in a workshop environment, developing motion-based racing simulators through repeated prototyping. Operating in India’s limited hardware funding ecosystem meant navigating high component costs, long development cycles, and minimal early institutional backing.
The larger obstacle, however, was perception.
Investor feedback reflected a common belief: advanced simulators should be imported, not built locally. The addition of Suraj Juneja brought strategic structure and scale thinking, helping transition the venture from experimental builds to commercial rollout .
What MetaDrive Did Differently
Rather than immediately targeting exports or large enterprise deals, MetaDrive focused on controlled, domestic validation.
- Indigenous engineering: Motion systems designed and assembled in India.
- Experience-led entry: Launched its first arcade in Kolkata to prove consumer demand.
- Cost alignment: Structured pricing around Indian entertainment spending behavior.
The first arcade demonstrated strong engagement, validating the experiential format .
Milestones and Scale
A major inflection point came with their appearance on Shark Tank India, which elevated national visibility and increased valuation by 1.5x .
Within a year:
- Expanded from 1 to 16 arcades
- Activated franchise-led growth
- Initiated work in defence and mobility R&D applications
Growth followed infrastructure readiness rather than media momentum alone.
Strategic Decisions That Drove Growth
MetaDrive prioritized operational sequencing. It established physical presence before pursuing aggressive expansion, used television exposure as a credibility accelerator rather than a dependency, and combined hardware innovation with recurring revenue through arcade operations.
Final Take
MetaDrive’s trajectory reflects a broader shift in India’s startup landscape—from reselling imported technology to building original hardware capabilities.
The journey underscores that in hardware-led businesses, disciplined iteration, market validation, and supply-chain preparedness matter more than narrative hype. In an ecosystem long defined by software scale, MetaDrive chose the harder engineering path—and built domestic capacity in the process.
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