As a Muslim woman, Pakistani-American Mariam Nusrat has always stood out among STEM startup founders. Her venture-backed Gaming Revolution for International Development provides a platform to easily create low-cost video games, and her not-for-profit Gaming Revolution for Inspiring Development creates games with a positive social impact. Tune in to learn how she plans to empower every smartphone owner in the world.
Transcript
Denzil Mohammed: I’m Denzil Mohammed. Welcome to JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: What is the average age of a gamer, someone who plays video games? Bet you didn’t guess 35. That’s right. The profile of gamers today spans every demographic, not just kids. But it doesn’t have to be just fun and games. What if we could be educated from gaming? What if we could have social justice impact from gaming? And what if we could become the game creators ourselves? For Mariam Nusrat, immigrant from Pakistan and founder and CEO of both the venture backed Gaming Revolution for International Development and the not-for-profit Gaming Revolution for Inspiring Development, both, of course, with the acronym GRID, these things are reality. GRID, the for-profit arm, is democratizing the creation of video games with a software as a service platform called Breshna. And the not-for-profit arm creates low cost social impact games that educate, engage and empower people towards positive behavior change. However, this economist turned tech entrepreneur stands out. A Muslim immigrant woman in tech, Mariam is doing it and aims to empower many of the 3.2 billion smartphone users worldwide, as you’ll discover in this week’s JobMakers.
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Denzil Mohammed: Mariam Nusrat, immigrant from Pakistan and founder and CEO of GRID, welcome to the JobMakers podcast. How are you?
Mariam Nusrat: Thank you so much Denzil. I’m excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. And I’m excited to have a conversation with you.
Denzil Mohammed: I’m excited to meet you because you have such a cool product. Tell us a little bit about your business and your particular market. What does GRID stand for, first of all?
Mariam Nusrat: Absolutely. So GRID is an acronym that actually stands for two legal entities. So Gaming Revolution for International Development, which is a C corp, it’s a tech startup building the TikTok for video games. So basically Breshna is a platform that allows anyone to create their own video games without any coding, without any design skills. Anyone can come on and make their own video games, be it entertainment games, or education games or marketing games. But this is … Imagine if you wanted to make a Super Mario for math learning, you can go on to Breshna and create that. And Breshna itself means lightning in the Pashtun language, which is my mother tongue. So it’s video games without any coding and at lightning speed. So that’s GRID on the C-corp. And then Gaming Revolution for Inspiring Development is our not-for-profit arm. And that’s where we create low-cost mobile games for positive behavior change. So GRID stands for Gaming Revolution for International or Inspiring Development.
Denzil Mohammed: That is very cool. And you mentioned international development, you’re an economist, an educational specialist, you’ve worked in international development. How did you end up in gaming?
Mariam Nusrat: Yeah, Denzil [laughs], I often ask myself the same question. So it’s like my … I’ve done my bachelors in econ. My first master’s from LUMS was an econ. My second master’s at GW was in International Development Studies. There is no computer science, no game development in any of that. And I worked for 12 years at the World Bank across 22 different countries, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Middle East. as an education specialist, as a policy maker in the education space. And eight years ago, one of the things I realized was that purposeful communication … So if you wanna raise awareness on education or health or behavior change or financial literacy, it’s often, “Here’s a brochure. Here’s a website.” Maybe if things get really exciting, “Here’s a video.” But that’s not how behavior change happens if we look at the western world, what Fitbit did for health, where it completely gamified health. What I grew up playing, games like SIMCity, where I was learning about urban planning without even knowing I was learning about urban planning, we just don’t see video games being mainstreamed for behavior change so that I was actually doing my second master’s degree. So I was a consultant at the World Bank, a student at GW. And that’s when I said, “You know what? I don’t see video games being mainstream for a purpose beyond entertainment. So I’m gonna make a gaming studio where we’re gonna create mobile games for positive behavior change.” So I put together a team of game developers and designers, and we started creating one of our first games. [It] was actually a menstrual health game, a period game, a mobile game, which was in English, Urdu Swahili, Nepalese. And basically the big idea was to build awareness around reproductive health and menstrual health. So that was kind of the beginning of gaming. It came from a pain point of making purposeful communication fun.
Denzil Mohammed: Making personal, purposeful communication fun. I love that. And this ties into something that I think is sort of inherent in you. And maybe you got it from your parents. You once mentioned that the idea of public service is something you got from your parents. So why is it important to you to use technology in this way?
Mariam Nusrat: Yeah, absolutely. So, Denzil, I grew up, my dad was in the public service all his life. So I’ve seen policy and public service as I’ve been growing up. And one of the things that my father, this is I think I was in third grade, he came back from an executive course and he literally had these three newspaper cuttings. Okay, the first one had the logo of LUMS, which is the top business school in Pakistan, Lahore University of Management Sciences. The second one was a logo of London School of Economics. And the third one was a logo of the World Bank. I’m in third grade, and this guy is like, “All right, child, you’re gonna go to LUMS. You’re gonna do your bachelor’s in econ. Then you’re gonna do your master’s in econ. And then you’re gonna go work at the World Bank.” And I’m like, “Whoa.” And then he held my fist and he was like, “The world is in your hands.” And he was like, “No matter, like it is directly proportional to the hard work that you put in.” So I think that lens of public service, international development policy was something that was really built into my DNA. But over time, one of the things I realized is that I have the solutions-oriented approach to things. And I think the more and more I discover technology in my daily life and video games as, how are we not unleashing the power of video games for a purpose beyond entertainment? Look at the time that we spend on games, there are one billion video game players playing video games for one hour on average around the world. One billion people, for one hour every single day they’re playing video games, can be unleashed this time for a purpose beyond entertainment. So that was kind of what led me to it. So I think the pain point I realized, to my nurture and training, but the solutions came from my passion for technology.
Denzil Mohammed: And I think you mentioned at some point that the average gamer is a 35-year-old woman on the subway playing Candy Crush.
Mariam Nusrat: Yeah. And I think we’re also one of the most overlooked demographics in video games. Like when you think about a gamer, it’s often the 22-year-old in a basement playing Call of Duty for seven hours. But actually the fastest growing genre of games is the hyper-casual genre of games, which is mobile games, so games like Candy Crush and games like Angry Birds. People spend a lot of their time waiting. So on average a person in the western world spends seven years of their life waiting for stuff to happen. You’re on the metro waiting. You’re at the DMV office waiting. You’re in the line, you wait for things to happen. And that’s where people weave in video games. So games become a part of their daily routine. And I believe that Breshna now is empowering that 35-year-old woman to not just play her own games, but also to make them. It’s just like the TikTok for video games. So it’s about this idea of there’s one billion players around the world. Can we also have one billion makers that can tell their story through video games?
Denzil Mohammed: Oh, that is so cool. And I brought up the 35-year-old woman on the subway, because … just to show the cross section of people you can reach. And you mentioned TikTok and I think about my eight-year-old and ten-year-old nephews who spend so much time on TikTok and on video games. But they’re very … They learn a lot from some of these videos. They come with all sorts of trivia and they get interested in animals or climate change, things like that. So they are open to learning from these things, from this kind of technology. So I really am happy that you brought that up. As we brought up your parents, let’s take it back. You mentioned LUMS, it’s a university in Pakistan. You are from Pakistan and you still identify as Pakistani. Can you describe for listeners what life was like in Pakistan growing up?
Mariam Nusrat: Yeah, absolutely. So Denzil, I was born in Quetta, which is actually one of the most conservative provinces within Pakistan. My mom is originally from that province. And my dad, he migrated from India when he was young and everything. So then I grew up in the capital, which is Islamabad, and often, it’s actually funny, Denzil. I’ve had interviews where it’s been like, “Oh, you were the suppressed woman in Pakistan, and what does life feel like in America?” But actually, I grew up with a father who just believes in empowering daughters. And I think that level of confidence that my dad put into me, this idea that there is no ceiling, that I can push through with hard work with the right amount of passion. We grew up as a middle-income family, but our education was the top priority. So my parents were just investing in our education, private schools, French classes, swimming classes, whatever it took. Even in Pakistan it was, Hey, that is the biggest investment they could make. It wasn’t buying properties. Even today, they live in a rental house. But for us, the biggest thing was … It wasn’t buying cars. It wasn’t buying properties. It was putting money into our education and that’s been the biggest investment that they could’ve made. So that’s kind of what life looked like. I think, I hope that I’ve made them, I think I’ve made them very proud. They do say I’ve made them very proud. But it’s also very Asian parents. I remember I was on stage with President Clinton, and as part of the Clinton Global Initiative University, and I called my dad. I was like, “That was so cool. Did you see that it got livestreamed on [inaudible]?” It was like, “That was amazing. What a great honor. Now make sure the next one is a sitting president.” [Laughs] All right. I guess we’re on it, but yeah.
Denzil Mohammed: Difficult to please guy. But you know, as a past interviewee said on this podcast, “You know, if you’re gonna dream, don’t just dream high, dream higher.”
Mariam Nusrat: My first few years in the U.S. are a complete blur, because I think I overworked and I over-studied. But you know, I think that I’ve always approached every single day with the three Ps. And I think it’s perseverance, passion and purpose. If you show up every single day working towards a goal with the passion, I think it just becomes relatively easy and relatively fun. And then you just have to enjoy the ride along the way.
Denzil Mohammed: I don’t imagine that you came to the U.S. with the intention of being a business owner or certainly not gaming. So what was it like when you first started? How did you get funding? How did you go about scaffolding this business?
Mariam Nusrat: Absolutely. So, Denzil, I’ll actually touch on a little bit the very beginning and then bring you to this actual, the C-corp, which is the venture-backed business, where we have venture funding and investors and all of that, because that’s a really exciting part to it. But I think when I started off I had achieved the dream that my dad set for me, which was work at the World Bank. So I was on this path of economist, senior economist, education specialist, manager, country director, vice president, like that. I had it all charted out for me and everything. So I think this idea of starting GRID and in the beginning, like a side gig … Oh, okay. That’s cute. You’re making video games, that’s cool and everything, but it started to take a life of its own. And I did it as a side gig for a while and everything. But last year, when we started building Breshna under a C-corp, it was like, Okay, this is getting real and we’re gonna go raise funding for this. And we’re gonna raise venture capital. And when I started then I’m an East Coast founder with no business, no tech background. I did not know the difference between a VC [venture capitalist] and an angel. And today it’s really cool. We’ve raised $2.5 million in venture capital over this last span of seven months. And we have all our cap [capitalization] table … This is something that I can actually share now, we have on our cap table the American billionaire Bill Atman. Or, for instance, we have some really cool Web3 crypto funds, Web2 funds. So it’s been a really epic journey and everything. And I think what, the way I approach it is, I know nothing, but there’s so much to learn and that’s the exciting part of it. We live in the world of the internet. Twitter is out there. We’ve been building in public. We’ve been making connections. I think what COVID did was really bring people to the virtual world. So the opportunities that were at first limited to Silicon Valley all of a sudden became global. You did not have to be in the Bay Area to go meet someone. You could just get on the Zoom. So I think I’ve had 320 investor meetings where you just knock on doors and you get a lot of Nos, but then once the dominoes start falling, you get a lot of Yeses. And all of those, mostly out of those, I think 90 percent of those have been virtual. People have never met in real life. I have investors in our cap table that I still haven’t met. And I think that is just such a cool opportunity, where it’s not just where you are as an immigrant in America, you could be anywhere, any part of the world right now, and have access to the same opportunities.
Denzil Mohammed: What did it feel like, however, going and asking and being an immigrant, having an accent?
Mariam Nusrat: Absolutely. So I think, Denzil, I have to admit the imposter syndrome is very real, saying, “Hey, do I belong? I mean, do I belong in the gaming industry? Do I belong in the Web3 world?” I mean, the blockchain industry tech sector is just expanding and growing so rapidly. And do I belong in any of these spaces? And I think honestly the biggest barrier is your own mental barrier, being able to say, “Okay, you know what, I’m gonna give it a shot. I’m gonna show up with authenticity and I’m gonna show up with my passion and then let the space decide whether they wanna accept me or not.” And I’ve just seen such an insane amount of acceptance and this is the beautiful thing about America. I do believe that if you want, there’s a community that gets created around you and then they rally you and they mobilize you. It’s at that point, I do think, it becomes irrespective of your gender, the color of your skin, the religion you are, because at that point, it is that based hard work, that sheer passion that just runs through. And then everyone just rallies behind you. So I think immigrants have that resilience and that grit to have that passion show true. So I think it’s been really interesting.
Denzil Mohammed: Give us some examples of your favorite or most impactful or original games and the issues that they tackled.
Mariam Nusrat: The most creative ones are someone will make a simple birthday wish for their mom where it’s, “Hey, here’s a video game that I made to wish my mom.” But I think the ones that are the closest to my heart … Entertainment is awesome. But I think the ones that are closest to my heart are the climate, are the social impact ones. So games around women in tech, games around drug use, games around structural racism, games around this idea of, It’s startups and entrepreneurship. Or I think the most favorite ones are the math learning games that are being used in schools. We have a teacher in South Africa and a teacher in East Asia, and they both collaborate and they swap these games. So it’s like, Look at the connections over here. And each of their students will make games and then they’ll swap them. But then I also had a father who made a period game, because he’d lost his wife. He’s single, parenting a daughter who just reached puberty, and he had no idea how to talk to her about periods. So he came on Breshna and created a game around menstrual health to kind of break that barrier because then the father and daughter were just playing a game. And it wasn’t something that was stigmatized to talk about. So I think video games have such a powerful communication aspect, and we just wanna empower everyone to tell their own story through video games.
Denzil Mohammed: So where do you see business going as you forge ahead and [inaudible]?
Mariam Nusrat: So that’s kinda crazy. I’m an avid user of Canva. And Melanie Perkins, she’s a woman, she’s Australian. So I’m an avid user of Canva and Canva democratized design for people who had no design skills and everything. And I think Melanie Perkins, she started that business at the age of 17. She started with school books, like basically designing school [year]books. And now that business is valued at $40 billion. And I think that if you look at the business side of it, one of the goals I have … And they always say, If you visualize your goals … So I have my whole IPO speech and what I’m gonna wear and everything sorted out. But I mean, one of the biggest things I wanna do is be the first immigrant woman who IPOs a decacorn at NASDAQ. I mean, forget decacorn. A woman, an immigrant woman, the first white woman to IPO a unicorn at NASDAQ was Bumble’s founder. And that was only a few years ago. So that representation has just not happened, and I absolutely want to be the first or among the first. I want a bunch of us to show up there, ringing that IPO bell. And I think that’s definitely on the business side. But at the end of the day, my biggest vision is what we are building for. And what I’m building for is a world where everyone can tell their story through video games. When I grew up, when I was playing video games, I always saw the New York city skyline and the yellow cab and the white dude. And the first time I saw an Arabic in a video game, unfortunately, was in the context of terrorism. It was the person you were shooting at, the Muslim you were shooting at. And I think, for me, it’s just so important that video games are such a cool tool for communication. But why should the rest of the world play games that have been made in one part of the world? Why can we not flip the script and have … If there’s one billion players around the world, why should there not be one billion makers of video games that tell their own stories in their own language, with their own music, with their own avatars and with their own content. And that’s the world I wanna build.
Denzil Mohammed: So how do you feel at the end of the day about the United States as the place that gave you this opportunity to build a community and build a business and build a nonprofit?
Mariam Nusrat: I really do think that there’s something in the DNA, there’s something in the water in America where we, where just cultures collide and experiences collide around a shared goal. So if you have a clear vision, and if you are able to communicate that vision, and say, I am gonna go for … build this world that has never been built before, there is something about innovation that excites this country. And it’s just everyone in this country where they just rally around you. And I think that excitement and that ecosystem, if you think about it, regulatory ecosystem, how easy it is to register an LLC, how easy it is to be able to engage people. Compared to some of the other regulatory environments, like being able to fundraise, being able to bring on investors, being able to work across state lines, I really, really do think that this country is set up. The DNA is set up for innovation.
Denzil Mohammed: You weren’t inhibited by the fact that you were a woman, that you were Muslim, that you had an accent, that you have a different name?
Mariam Nusrat: I see it as a strength. You know, I personally think the fact that I’m a woman, the fact that I have these lived experiences, a lot of times the … Every single solution that I’ve come up with, it’s been the way I’ve looked at the pain point. It’s my lived experiences that have led to that diverse perspective where I’ve been like, “Oh, interesting. Maybe if we could do education like this, or maybe if we could leverage, like I played SIMCity, and how about we do it like this?” And I think it’s that diversity of perspective that leads to innovation. So I actually see it as a strength.
Denzil Mohammed: Oh, wow. This was really inspiring, Miriam Nusrat, immigrant from Pakistan and founder / CEO of GRID. Thank you so much for joining us and the JobMakers podcast.
Mariam Nusrat: Thank you so much, Denzil. It’s an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Denzil Mohammed: JobMakers is a weekly podcast about immigrant entrepreneurship and contribution produced by Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston, and The Immigrant Learning Center in Malden, Massachusetts, a not-for-profit that gives immigrants a voice. Thank you for joining us for this week’s inspiring story of immigrant entrepreneurship. Remember, you can subscribe to JobMakers on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. And please leave us a rating and a review. I’m Denzil Mohammad. See you next Thursday at noon for another JobMakers.