Mobile gaming industry to become a $5-billion market in India by 2025

The Indian gaming market is generating USD 1.5 billion revenue and is anticipated to triple to more than USD 5 billion by 2025.

As per the latest BCG-Sequoia India report, the market is supported by the “mobile-first” phenomenon, despite the industry standing at 1 per cent of the global gaming market.

The report surveys the development of Indian mobile gaming in terms of genres, engagement and monetisation magnitudes.

Vikash Jain who is the managing director and senior partner, BCG, said that the gaming market in the country has seen a growth of almost 40 per cent in 2019-20, more than that of OTT platforms, television and social media platforms.

Vikash Jain added, “86 per cent of this market consists of mobile phone users. While there is a large dependence on ad revenues today, increasing traction and engagement is expected to drive higher willingness to pay which will drive new ways of user monetisation and rising ARPUs in the coming years.”

The gaming market in the country has been catalysed by promising smartphones, improved internet access, prominent titles, influencers, and the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The report titled ‘Mobile Gaming: $5B+ Market Opportunity’, plunges deeper into this space to assess the existing mobile gaming market in India, and its possibilities for expansion.

Rajan Anandan, who is the managing director of Sequoia India said that the report also brings out how India is rising as both an investment opportunity and a talent hub for the world.

He added that monetisation of Indian games has been a major concern in the past and is already at USD 1.8 billion revenues ramping very quickly.

The Consumer Survey conducted by BCG as part of this titled report, which collected ideas from over 3200 respondents across 21 locations in India to assure comprehensiveness and representativeness, analyzes the gaming patterns of the Indian gamer.

The Managing Director and partner of BCG Mandeep Kohli said that the Indian gamer is not distinguished by their demographic, rather they are distinguished by their context, their needs, preferences, and gaming patterns.

Kohli said, “An average player who plays to avoid boredom may spend around 1-2 hours on games, while a die-hard gamer who plays for the competitive spirit, can spend nearly double the time on gaming while playing the same game or a different game altogether."

Mandeep Kohli said that the gaming firms which can understand these different consumers and specify which ones are they fulfilling are the ones that will lead the gaming market.

For the stakeholders, this report accentuates the main imperatives that will steer the next wave of growth for this fast-paced market.

These include improving the discovery and adoption through occasional and free-to-play competitions, improving the method and retention by adapting genres to boost engagement and retention, and effectively riding monetisation through localised pricing policies, among others.