Today we also met Sangam Gupta of Trine who set up his games studio after working for EA in the States. Using the capital he had saved from his college business he convinced six of his EA colleagues to come to India and started up the studio, which makes console games, in New Delhi.

Trine is an impressive set up, employing 300 people and was responsible for creating the first triple play game to come out of India. The staff are international, from Germany, France and Russia and the company is entirely self-financed (they have just acquired a US-based publisher). Like the other games studios they are hot on developing their own IP and will launch Wii Yoga in the next few months.

Whilst Trine was impressive and the staff had a much nicer working environment that India Games, I found the meeting a little unsettling. Sangam talked a lot about how well he treats his staff, their high wages and access to first-rate equipment that will stand them in good stead in the career market. He clearly works them hard but rewards them with profit share and trips to Goa when the company launches a new product. However when asked about the gender split in his company, he reveals that only 6 of his 300 staff are women (who keep things clean and are good at HR and finance). Obviously this is not good for many reasons, not in the least that a diversity in approach makes better product and because women are a significant market for games publishers and so should be involved in the creative process.

Sangam however was firm - his experience was that either women cry when they are told they are doing something wrong or they are too domineering of the male workers. Tas and I were almost speechless (although I am not sure why this suprised me after my experience of C&binet - perhaps because he was so blunt about it). We had a go at presenting the counter-arguments, but there was no talking him round. Which is a shame, I wanted very much to come away liking Trine and Sangam, but something in the way he spoke lacked a degree of authenticity.