India’s Gaming Revolution, Opportunities & Challenges, Vamil Doshi, Nazara.

[Music] [Applause] [Music] uh we're going to talk now about India's gaming Revolution and the opportunities that presents so Vil we've got have we got Vil here yes here we go hey uh we're going to uh hear from naar and Nazar who's going to tell us all about the Indian gaming market after you sir yeah I'm here to talk about India uh India's gaming Revolution what the opportunities are and what the challenges are currently

um just a little background about me uh I've been in gaming industry since the last 14 years uh I've created the street Cricket franchise for PlayStation I had three hit mobile games in the top 10 in the year 2022 including the president and uh desert DIY I've previously worked in companies such as uh Disney crazy labs quali and uh currently here I am looking for games to publish in India well you know what's the agenda for today it's simple the Indian gaming market and how nazara can help you reach the 600 million user base um let's look at the Indian market um we clogged 568 million gamers in the year 2023 and growing at a cagr of 12% uh the average time spent uh on playing games per week used to be 9 to uh 10

hours and it's grown to 10 to 12 hours now and uh India is the second biggest country in terms of total downloads uh 15.4 billion downloads clocked in the year 2023 uh if you look at the male female ratio 59% M gamers are male and uh 41% are female uh there has been a significant increase in the share of Gamers uh in the non Metro cities or the tier 2 tier 3 cities uh from 50 7% to 66% in the year 2023 uh and if you look at the age distribution more than 50% gamers are less than 30 years of age followed by almost 30% in the age range of 31 to 45 years old the Indian gaming industry clocked $3.1 billion in the year fi23 and is all set to hit $7.5 billion in the year 2028 significantly growing at at 20%

CGR um most of these revenues are expected to come from mobile games casual games which will contribute almost 70% via ads and in our purchases um uh the uh estimated IP revenue from games uh other than bgmi and free fire have seen almost a 30 7% increase and the number of paying Gamers uh has grown by almost 17% in the year fi23 which means 25% of gamers in India are now doing Ina purchases the AR PPU the average revenue per paying users uh grew 10x from the year fi9 to fi23 which is now almost at 19.2 and the icpms as you can see the rewarded are 1.7 $5 inals are 133

and banner ads are still low but it's 0.07 uh what are the top games and genres that do really well in India uh we have action uh because the top two games in India are bgmi and free fire followed by sports card games be it solitire or local Indian uh card games and Casual games in general have had have always been there in the top 10 or top 50 throughout now after the Indian market you know what are the challenges that we see right um as you see India has a population of 1.4 billion um the Indian states are you can easily compare them to a country where there are 29 states in India but you know like one one state Maharashtra is equal to Japan in terms of size or in terms of users or for

example Tamil Nadu which is the southern state in India is as good as the size of Germany um over 29 States as I mentioned there are over 22 official languages and over 1500 dialects that makes it really difficult to localize um and each state has a different governing body that also means that most of the states have uh different tax laws and uh again that sort of makes it a challenging Affair for anyone launching in India um there have been some taxation laws introduced in the last year in the online video game industry um and especially making it difficult for real money games to monetize but now there's absolute Clarity from the government being involved that gaming is being taken very seriously as a major economic contributor uh and we now have um not

the most favorable tax loss but yes there is governance and we are looking forward to launching more games and there's complete Clarity in terms of what the taxation is going to be um when I look at the top two games in India and we looking at the top 10 Crossing games here the top two games in India have have a really specific Indian version have indianized content in the game and they've also you know branded themselves or worked with many um actors or influencers within the Indian gaming uh within the within India uh to make a mark in their game uh local IAP pricing is very very important and essential to boost revenues in India um over 80% transactions happen via UPI which is the unified um payment interface um there's a very very low like almost less than 2% penetration of credit cards

it's important to have many different uh payment methods uh to be able to monetize in India and uh as you see the top 10 grossing games in India in just February 2024 has just two Indian developers and eight International developers so there's a massive market for international developers to come and make money in India now with all of these also there was some regulatory issues like some games were banned in India due to security concerns and the way to comply is you know to have your servers in India and also ensuring that data sa safety is aligning with the dpdp ACT um this means if you want to launch in India have your servers there and comply with the data privacy acts uh now we've gone to the Indian market we've gone through the challenges

uh here I'm representing nazara I'm the head of publishing at nazara and how can nazara help you expand in India right now nazar's IP span the entire Indian demographic landscap uh landscape uh with many of their Live Events multiple platforms and games R ranging from the age right of two to going up to 45 plus you see like we have kopia and Animal Jam which targets the early age and early learning and early gaming followed by a sports media Platform Sports Kaa which covers a wide range of age demographic our Live Events why nwin uh Esports covers a lot of the youth population uh We've also just acquired ComicCon India and we are also now into uh casual games and real money games

now Nazar has a differentiated business model with uh presence across multiple platforms naming gaming Esports media platforms and attech a major chunk of our revenue is coming from Esports and Sport Sports media platform uh followed by early gaming and Casual games and uh not sure if you guys heard the news uh recently nazara has pledged $100 million for Global acquisitions uh the focus is on well established IPS creative and Innovative uh gaming Studios and emerging Technologies such as web3 VR and AI so you know we are here to do some Acquisitions so please do connect with me as soon as uh my talk is done and uh from nazar's publishing point of view our value proposition for growth in India we are here to provide minimum G guarantees for your games to

mitigate Financial risks and encourage trust uh nazara will scale your games via user acquisition and marketing um you know no one knows the localized Indian market as we do and we are here to help you localize your game content as well as user acquisition uh we also believe in 100% transparency and we have a dedicated team to support your game to increase their retention engagement monetization and thus I would like to conclude it that you know if you are thinking India you think nazara thank you naste thank you very much do you have any quick questions anyone got any quick questions on the Indian market in that case oh oh we got one right here right here so I couldn't see you right behind the pillow uh so I know for you know people are looking for local Publishers in

China they're usually looking for a culturalized forked version of the build are you requiring that depth of customization culturalization or is it simply you continue to publish through your your core build and you guys just help provide a layer of publishing um sorry I didn't get the question or the volume is a bit low uh I heard China W I'll just I'll just yeah that's perfect that's better I do you require people to Fork a build and publish it through your own tool set or is this simply providing a layer of publishing tools on top of of their their game that's already being published into India via their current you know core build so we are uh if your game's published we are just more than happy to take the Indian region for you there's there's nothing extra layer that needs to be added on top of it um as far as localization is concerned luckily mean 70 to 80% in people in India speak English uh but depending on your game when we see attaction in different states and different cities if there's localization required we are more than happy to help uh localize your content

in India and and I've I've used uh India market for functional testing with English Ang versions quite often because it's quite useful because it's actually quite a good range of devices it's not like it was 10 years ago where it was very difficult to do testing in that way uh the the audience Behavior and the audience reaction to English language games actually really positive I found absolutely um and the good thing is we have a range of mobile devices ride from less than $100 going up to $1,200 $1,300 so you know if you want to also enter the Indian market you have to try to make sure that your game appeals on the lower-end devices too uh for a larger audience but those lower end devices are actually remarkably good some of these like $100 um I mean they've got restrictions but I find it's really useful to find uh technical glitches in your game yeah although sometimes you find it's in the engine but that's another subject anyway on that note thank you thank you very much thank you

great we're going to kick off now oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] sorry