The Indian gamer was a rare breed even a decade ago. The country skipped a generation of gaming—PC and console-based games, which are popular in developed markets—and went directly to mobile gaming. It almost mirrors India’s mobile-first internet demographic, where hundreds of millions of users skipped desktops and laptops, and tasted the web for the first time on their smartphones.
Like many other industries, gaming has gained immeasurably from the penetration of cheap mobile data, which has lowered entry barriers for people. Anybody with even an entry-level smartphone can download a gaming app off the Google Play Store, and add to the burgeoning mobile gaming audience in the country.
India today is the world’s largest online gaming market by app downloads, according to analytics firm Sensor Tower. As of May 2022, the country accounted for 916 million instals, or 19.2 per cent of total worldwide downloads of games. In January, this number was at 761.8 million, or 14.6 percent of global downloads, indicating steady growth. “The pandemic did one thing for the gaming industry—it converted non-gamers to casual gamers. Gaming companies were far more aggressive in pushing their games since people had more time on their hands,” says Gaurav Agarwal, Co-founder of Gamezop, a mobile gaming start-up. The monthly rate of non-gamers turning casual gamers may have come down now, “but those who became gamers during the lockdowns continue to game regularly,” he adds.
In 2020, buoyed by the rapid growth in new users, downloads, and app engagement, online gaming as a segment outperformed most other media and entertainment (M&E) segments in India, according to KPMG. “The lockdowns were a tipping point for the industry, with [the number of] people playing online games higher by 20-25 per cent than pre-Covid-19 levels. The lack of physical social interaction coupled with increased disposable time at hand led to the growth of Ludo King and other social games during 2020 and 2021,” says a KPMG spokesperson. “These games have been going strong since then.”
Take Ludo King, for instance. A ‘lockdown sensation’ and India’s most downloaded game of all time, it crossed 800 million global instals in June 2022, growing from 300 million in December 2020. Not only did it attract an all-new demographic of players (45+ years) during the lockdown, it also turned gaming into a mainstream entertainment alternative and a social interaction tool.
Gamezop, meanwhile, licenses HTML5 games from developers and integrates it in non-gaming platforms like Amazon, MX Player, Vodafone, Airtel, etc. It has been pushing integrations aggressively after the pandemic. “In the first series of lockdowns, we were aggressively releasing these integrations, and saw the sharpest rise in user numbers. This was the Ludo King phase,” says Agarwal, adding, “Today, gaming has become a lifestyle choice.”
Besides social multiplayer games such as ludo, carrom, and pool that gained popularity during Covid-19, India is also seeing an uptick in games like Battlegrounds Mobile India (an Indianised version of PUBG) and cricket-based games, “which are evergreen”, says KPMG.
“The market was dormant for a long time. Casual games were difficult to monetise. Then things started to change with the battle royale games (PUBG, Free Fire, BMG) that redefined the market. These game publishers have managed to get in-app-purchases (IAPs) on a very high scale, and are now generating $150 million-plus in revenues a year for each title,” says Piyush Kumar, Founder & CEO of Rooter Sports, a games streaming platform.
In the Web 3.0 universe, all games will be “economies in themselves”. Audiences will pay for the premium content that will, in turn, increase ARPUs. “Advertisers too will be willing to pay more because the metaverse is new and trendier,” says Agarwal. “The predominant form of monetisation in Indian gaming will be advertising. And that is not going to change anytime soon,” he states.
And that may not be a bad thing for a nascent industry
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