The Agarwalla brothers, in some sense, are true cyber innovators; they belong to the Internet that has killed the copyright. Where every idea is up for change and improvisation. In fact, argue experts, it would have made more business sense for Hasbro to jump onto the Scrabulous bandwagon. The brothers don’t want to venture into such speculation. They would rather tell you that Scrabulous started when they found themselves on the wrong end of the copyright battle.

“We are big fans of Scrabble and would play it online for hours. But suddenly a free online word game website, Quadplex, became a pay site. So, we then launched our own online word game site, BingoBinge, and later changed it to Scrabulous. That was in 2006. Then in June 2007, egged on by a user, we posted Scrabulous on Facebook, and in no time, hundreds of thousands of users became fans,” says Jayant.
The fascination with wordplay and the Web began in the summer of 1995. The two youngsters living in south Kolkata’s Minto Park locality received their dream gift from an uncle — a personal computer and an Internet connection. “That was it. We took to online games like anything and developed a knack for chess. As children, chess was our favourite game, and we also had a thing for word games,” says Jayant.

Rajat and Jayant, both commerce graduates, belong to an affluent joint family in south Kolkata. Their father runs a manufacturing business, dealing in window grills and razor blades, while their mother is a housewife. Apart from their world of online games and Scrabulous, Rajat and Jayant together run a web development and outsourcing firm called RJ Softwares. Their next project is developing a separate online game and gaming community, which will exclusively cater to underprivileged children from all over the world.
And how is life outside office? “We are regular guys. We usually catch a movie on weekends, and enjoy watching thrillers, suspense, and comedy films. My brother enjoys squash and swimming while I’m more into table tennis, chess, and PC games like Unreal Tournament. I’m also a huge fan of Twenty20 cricket,” Jayant says, a pass-out of St Xavier’s College, like his elder brother.
Scrabble? “Oh yes, we still play the game for hours,” says Jayant. “Only, Rajat is better at it. But I’m getting there.”