Poornima has been part of the gaming industry since 2006 and has worked with some of the best names in the Indian gaming industry, including Indiagames (Disney India), Jumpstart (NetDragon), GSN Games, Square Enix etc. She found game dev by chance, but chose it as her career completely out of her passion for games and translated that passion further by co-founding Pinaka Interactive (a game design studio) and NammaLore Entertainment (a game development studio). Poornima believes in using the power of gaming to create a meaningful and impactful change in thinking. She also strives to make the industry more diverse and safe.
She is currently part of the Zynga family as a Director of Design.
She is a Women in Games Ambassador at WIGJ and the founder of Women in Games India (WIGIN).
Poornima is also visiting faculty, project consultant and curriculum committee member at the National Institute of Design as well as conducts workshops for other reputed institutes.
She has worked across a wide variety of genres, including casual games, free to play games, FPS, RPG, MMO, social casino and augmented reality. She has worked on titles like BioShock Mobile, The Office 3D, Predator, Cricket, games based on the How to Train Your Dragon franchise and NFL, FarmVille 2: Country Escape etc to name a few.
She has curated, judged and spoken at various design festivals and conferences like TEDx, Pocket Gamer Connects etc. She is also one of the mentors of Google’s Indie Game Accelerator.
She has also been inducted into the Women in Games – Global Hall of Fame in 2020, making her the first Indian game developer to receive such an honour. She was also one of the winners of the Special Recognition Award 2020 and one of the runner-ups of Mentor of the Year 2020 by WomenTech Network, winner of Outstanding Woman in Game Development at IIWA 2021 and winner of BW Gaming People Awards 2021 for Woman leading Gaming. She was also one of the finalists for GameHERs’ Game Designer of the Year 2021.
You can know more about her at http://drowlife.com/