A dog named Yasu and Sunday board games sparked a 40-country business

It started with a dog. Yasu, the pet of sisters Mrinalini and Nyonika Mitra, became the central character of a card game the two built together in their Lucknow home, and that game now has buyers in more than 40 countries.

The idea took shape during a hard year. Their mother was battling cancer, and to cope, the family spent every Sunday playing board games together in their Rajendra Nagar home. ‘So we created a card game around our dog, Yasu, a cheerful companion who always wants to play with us even during challenging times. That distraction made us feel happy and stress-free,’ the sisters said.

Mrinalini, an Oxford graduate, and Nyonika, a graduate of the London School of Economics, had given up internship opportunities and plans for careers abroad to return home and care for their mother. They first shared the game’s characters on YouTube, where an encouraging response motivated them to build a full card game.

Today, the business has crossed the $100,000 revenue mark, with buyers across the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and Canada. The sisters deliberately chose crowdfunding over outside investors to keep full ownership, and every illustration in the game is still hand-drawn rather than AI-generated.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by Gamester81