Experience Thrill Of Living Life On The Edge: Hareesh Mothi, CEO, Breakout
You’ve had a very long and successful career in finance earlier, which looks like quite the opposite of running an escape room. How did that leap happen?
While I was travelling to Poland during my HP stint, I was introduced to the concept of escape rooms by one of my colleagues there. Since Poland is not a very exciting place if you were to go there for a slightly longer period, you have to try out everything to keep yourself entertained. And that's how we stumbled across this concept, and I immediately became a huge fan. I was drawn to the fact that this activity can completely make you forget yourself for a sizeable period of time and really challenge your abilities. I went on to play escape rooms in about 12 more countries before starting my own escape brand. Through my experiences, what I realized is that the story component is often not very strongly embedded into the concept of the escape rooms for most brands. I wanted to create something better and more engaging. So, we went ahead with the movie-styled escape rooms.
My job as a finance professional was to help transform businesses and take them to greater heights. I realised that having a transformative impact on people made me feel content. I was extremely intrigued when I was introduced to the concept of Escape Rooms which took me a step closer to this venture. The passion for solving these mysteries was my brainchild for BREAKOUT.
Tell us about your venture? What is the idea behind it?
Our brand's core philosophy is providing novel experiences that can bring people together and add value in a creative and entertaining way. The goal is to create fun and inclusive environments where players across age groups, genders, hierarchies, and geographies can participate equally.
How will you explain escape rooms?
An escape room game is a real-time adventure game inside a themed room filled with puzzles, clues, and challenges. The concept originated in Japan and made its way to the US by 2013.
Imagine this: you and your team are placed in the heart of a mysterious case. The clock is ticking, and you have to find the right clues, deal with life-threatening obstacles and disturbing distractions to solve the mystery that leads you to the Ultimate Escape!
Breakout® stands out for both the quality and the diversity of the experiences it offers. We offer India’s only movie-styled escape rooms, whether it is in physical mode or virtual. With a novelty score of 98%, our experiences definitely take players aback with their unexpected level of innovative entertainment.
One of the biggest strengths of Breakout® is the fact that all the adventures are realistic, without any involvement of graphics, of 3-D representations, or recorded sessions. Whatever happens, happens in real-time, driving excitement and engagement to the next level.
The range of activities that we offer also allows us to accommodate people of all age groups and backgrounds. Hospitality is another very important aspect that we emphasize upon. Breakout® is able to maintain and grow its clientele primarily because we value our customers beyond the duration of the escape games as well.
How do Breakout Escape Rooms help people tackle their boredom?
We provide novel experiences that can bring people together and add value in a creative and entertaining way. The goal is to create fun and inclusive environments where players across age groups, genders, hierarchies, and geographies can participate equally.
Though this is a very unique concept in India, what is the future outlook of Escape Rooms? Why did you decide to get into the escape rooms Industry?
There are about 35 escape rooms in India where the population is spiked to 1.36 billion. On contrary in USA, there are 1832 escape rooms for the population of 331 million people. People always lookout to do new things, they want an alternate source of entertainment and learning. We are on the lookout to make the concept of breakout room familiar to people across the globe!
What are the opportunities and market size of Escape rooms?
As the market matures, an exclusive focus on first-time players is a liability. All escape room companies should try to convert first-time players into second-time players, and second-time players into habitual players. We all need an active community of players who are eager to experience more. It is about a 5 million dollar industry in India and a billion-dollar industry abroad.
What are your future expansion and funding plans?
Breakout Escape Rooms started in 2015, and in the last 6 years, we have hosted over 100K players. Currently, we have 3 experiential centres across the country. Our average brand rating is 4.8 stars from over 4,000 reviews.
We want to expand to about 20 cities in the next 2 years and build one of the strongest experiential companies in the country that can provide a lot of value to corporates and be a leader in birthday event organization as well.
As of now, it’s a bootstrap funding but as we expand, there will be investors pitching in.
What are the recent projects Breakout is working on?
