Bijay Gurung is the Business Development Director Europe at Sandsoft. Back 15 years ago, when Bijay started his career in the games industry, he was one of the first hires at Rovio, where he helped launching 20+ games. Bijay also worked in Real Networks and Huawei. Today we asked Bijay some key questions about getting into the games sector as well as the specifics of the business development role.
In the simplest terms, business development role covers all the ideas, initiatives, and activities that help make a business profitable, successful and prosperous: growing revenues and business expansion by exploring, identifying and entering strategic partnerships, as well as making strategic business decisions. “In the current state of the ever-changing mobile game industry, – says Bijay, – Business Development role is crucial. It allows to find synergies between companies, across platforms and across geos.”
A business development role looks one of the most comprehensive ones and definitely requires a lot of skills. According to Bijay, “hard skills would be to identify the key industry trends, understanding the key metrics and being able to articulate to potential partners with clear data. Soft skills would be negotiation skills, relationship management, teamwork, problem solving skills, etc. It requires one to wear multiple hats.”
“The most exciting things about the Business Development role is being able to talk to many developer friends from the industry and try to find synergies together. As this is an ever-evolving industry, it exciting to live and work in this industry.” – shared his experience Bijay.
Has the role of business development changed recently due to pandemic and market changes? How do you think the role of business development will change in the upcoming years? – we asked Bijay. “Major industry changes happened during or just before pandemic: (1) the mobile game players grew tremendously globally and (2) Apple made privacy policy changed the advertising for mobile games. We are seeing a huge level of investment and M&A activities in the gaming industry which makes the role of BD even more important.”
What would be your advise to young people / students pursuing a career in gaming and in business development in particular? “Gaming is here to stay as we reach more demography of players. It will still go through major changes which makes it an exciting industry to be in in the years to come. With the emergence of Web3 gaming, we are again heading for another exciting roller coaster in gaming.”
