Mumbai: India is one of the fastest-growing gaming consumption markets in the world, aided by a burgeoning young population and the cheapest internet and mobile data. However, the trend is shifting fast, and India is all set to be one of the biggest gaming producers in the next three years, as per the industry veterans at MySmartPrice’s first-ever gaming summit. The Summit has industry leaders as panellists like Piyush Kumar. Cofounder of Rooter, Megha Nair, Vice President, Dentsu Gaming; Firasat Durrani, Operations Head, Loco; Kuldeep Singh, CEO, Villager Esports; Anurag Khurana, Cofounder, Penta Esports, and Esports players like Hydra Secret.
MySmartPrice is one of India’s biggest gadget discovery platforms, with over 15mn+ shoppers coming to the platform to make purchase decisions for their next tech product.
Talking in one of the panels, Kuldeep Singh, CEO of Villager Esports, a leading gaming and esports company, said that the Indian gaming community is growing by leaps and bounds but with some top global games such as PubG, BGMI and FreeFire being banned by government, it gives a great opportunity for build some sports driven games.
“Now is the best time to build a variety of gaming communities. In the next 3-5 years, we expect some successful Indian esports games to take over the global market. There is enough scope for multiple games holding big communities rather than just having a few games taking the entire market share. The next 3-5 years will see some strong developments in Indian esports with some Made In India games taking over as the leaders,” Kuldeep said.
To this, Piyush Kumar of Rooter, a leading gaming and steaming startup in India, will be one of the global vital markets in smartphone gaming, boosted by the 5G rollout. He added, “Content will play a significant role in building some of these Made in India games and gaming communities. Gaming/esports is growing at an unprecedented rate and is expected to be bigger than OTT and music.”
Firasat Durrani from Loco also pointed out that they have been experimenting with original gaming content. The journey was tough, but now for the first time, the viewership of their originals has past millions of views from 10-20k views earlier.
Stressing the monetization of gaming products, the panellists were of the view that since it is difficult to monetize from the users directly, money has to come from brands, publishers and streamer platforms.
Megha Nair, Vice President of Carat and Dentsu Gaming, said, “Brands specifically look out for product placements in key IPs and hence they are getting into gaming fast to avoid losing that space altogether.”
Lately, brands have been ditching traditional display advertising and going for offline and online events, collaborating with content creators and influencers to capitalize on the burgeoning growth of the gaming industry, resulting in significant cash flows for gaming companies.
For Esports Players, creating a social media persona and distribution is very important for monetization as individuals, Firasat Durrani from Loco. pointed out. One should not rely only on their team and a game. They might be the starting point, but it should not be their be all end all.
Varun Ganjoo, Cofounder and CMO of Baazi Games, said Real Money Gaming is a growing platform with 500 million young audiences already participating in the ecosystem. Of this, 100 million gamers are paying users on the back of the positive regulatory moves taken by the government coupled with technology and product innovation.
Personalization and real-life experiences are needed on the online systems, he said, in a bid to grow the real money gaming (RMG) segment and make it more interactive. RMG has 55-60% of gaming revenue, and in app, purchases will grow at a CAGR of 34% as new users will enter with improving per capita GDP.
All the above factors will lead to an increased flow of equity funding into gaming startups, thus creating a larger socio-economic impact. The panellist concluded that more jobs are likely to be created in the gaming industry.
Covid has also been a major growth driver for gaming content adoption. The segment blossomed when the YT gaming creators, who started 8-10 years ago, became influencers and led the change from the forefront.
This young generation has taken the country’s gaming market to $2.6 billion this year, and it is expected to grow at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 27 per cent to reach $8.6 billion by 2027.
MySmartPrice also announced the winners of MSP popular choice awards recognizing the most popular name in their respective gaming categories during the event. The noticeable top winners were Realme in the most popular mid-range gaming smartphone category, ASUS ROG in the most popular gaming laptop category, Nvdia in the most popular GPU category, BGMI in the most popular smartphone game category and many more.
The event also witnessed the unveiling of the MSP Gaming Consumer Report 2022, India’s biggest and more comprehensive gaming report to understand the Indian Gamer. The report dwelves into the usage patterns and preferences of a gamer in terms of devices, games and features.
