As the virus kept us indoors for a long time, the third decade of the 21st century was marked by big-bang moment in the Indian gaming space. The main driver of the segment growth was online-gaming. Adoption of blockchain technology in gaming projects has become the catalyst of the process.
The industry in India has received a massive boost, and it will be sustained into the next half-decade because of two reasons. The first one is the acceptance of iGaming as a genuine entertainment option. That has helped destigmatize the activity. And the second one is the creation of culture around gaming as a whole.
According to a KPMG survey, gaming in India is primed to grow exponentially in the coming years. Between 2020 and 2021, the first year of life under Covid, the number of online gamers went up 13%, from 749 million to 846 million. In 2021, almost half the Internet users played games: 433 million out of 932 million. In 2025 the number of Internet users may reach around 1,134 million, and 657 million of them will be gamers.
Meanwhile, the value of the online gaming industry in the country is expected to reach Rs.290 billion in 2025, from Rs.136 billion in 2021, thus more than doubling. At this rate, the number of users will continue to rise year on year as game entrepreneurs look to bring out new titles and make the player experience ever more immersive and enjoyable.
Yet more data backs up this phenomenal growth. In Q1 2020, in the days immediately following the start of the pandemic, there were 1.8 million game downloads; in Q3 of the same year, that figure had surged to 2.9 million. Not just for the Indian audience, but across the world, online gaming is turning into one of the biggest and most profitable sectors, and not only in the entertainment industry.
There are a host of reasons behind this upsurge for the Indian audience. One of them is an increase in digitization, aided by the expansion of digital infrastructure and the upgradation of services. Among other reasons are a younger audience with more spending power, a dip in the cost of smartphones and the Internet data, and a diversity of choice in the category of games. The entry of international developers, deference to the local vernacular in the creation of games, as well as the localisation of games, are proving equally significant in empowering the gaming industry to flourish.
Online games can be divided into casual, real money (card and casino), fantasy sports and esports. And while the Indian market is dominated by casual gamers, those who play for fun without showing any desire to compete, it is seeing a very gradual rise in ‘mid core’ gamers, who, however, are unlikely to invest as much time, energy and money as the ‘hardcore gamers.
Alongside this spurt in growth, we are likely to see more Indian developers scaling up operations to answer the spike in demand for games. We also expect investors to be even more interested in the iGaming domain in near future. Since 2014 and till 2022 (Q1) around $2.9 billion has been raised to fund 76 online gaming startups. In 2021, funding for online gaming hit a record $1.7 billion! It’s 383% more than it was in 2020 ($360 million).
The only way is up. Outside of online gaming, both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) gaming are predicted to leave their niche image behind and transition to the mainstream, as the technology that powers each becomes ever more affordable and accessible.
To conclude, as the Indian audience adds more customers to the many millions already part of the ecosystem, the multiplayer gaming element will likely expand as more friends and family get involved. So, far from being perceived as a solitary and anti-social pursuit, gaming will evolve into a socially interactive hobby—just like those old-school board games, we grew up playing.
(The author is Mr. Dmitry Belianin, CCO Parimatch International and the views expressed in this article are his own)
