The Game Around Gaming in India
Vamsi Krishna
Global Expansion on the Horizon: Founder of South Asia's Premier Gaming & Esports Marketing Powerhouse | $3M Raised & Counting
In my 20years of work experience, the last 5 years were the most exhilarating and spent a significant amount of the time in building the - PC Gaming Ecosystem and Category. A gaming ecosystem that didn’t exist for a very long time. The gaming industry is now taking shape in India. There’s now an opportunity for us to, not just be as big as the other markets in the world, but in fact, lead the market. According to a CII report, the Indian gaming industry was valued at USD 543.08 million in 2017 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.61% which in my opinion is a conservative assumption
I’ve seen a shift in the gaming culture in India. Gaming was considered a taboo and parents weren’t too fond of their children who’d invest time in gaming. But over the last five years, I’ve seen a lot of factors that helped in growing the gaming market in the country. One of the reasons is the growth of mobile gaming. We believe that there are approximately 250 million mobile gamers in the country (second largest mobile gaming population in the world) and it’s the fastest growing segment in India as well. Because of mobile gaming, across demographics, kids as young as five and adults as old as 50 to 60 years are spending a significant amount of time playing games on their phones. In India, entertainment has always been about Cricket and Bollywood. Now, the third entertainment option which is growing rapidly is gaming. Additionally, there are approximately 500 million people who have access to the internet. With Jio’s aggressive 4G penetration, more and more people are using social media. There are 250 million active users of social media who are following global trends, and gaming is a global phenomenon. It is now safe to say that people in Tier 1,2 and 3 tier cities are now connected and aware of the latest trends in gaming as gaming is a trend that attracts most of the youth in the country.
From NVIDIA’s perspective, we are the leaders in working towards building a PC gaming ecosystem. We’ve realized that gaming will also bring value to business owners and investors. This is where Gaming Cafes come in. The Gaming cafe business is untapped in India and here’s why I think so - China has approximately 60 million gamers and 160,000 gaming cafes with an average 200 seating capacity. Whereas in India, there are only 16 million gamers with 500 gaming cafes with a seating capacity of around 20 which is meeting the demand for less than one percent gaming audience. The reason why gaming cafes didn’t pick up was the lack of awareness amongst investors. One good thing about Gaming cafes is, unlike other retail or entertainment businesses, there would be multiple revenue sources – Game Time, FnB, Sales of Accessories, Hardware, Merchandise, Events, PC Rentals, tournaments and Ads, making the business very dynamic. I have seen many new cafes getting 18-24month ROI.
We created this white paper that helps investors to get an insight into Gaming Cafes. You can find the link to the white paper here. I personally believe India has an appetite for 10,000 gaming cafes in next few years. My objective is to grow the Café business community and make this business a successful model. If you’re interested, write to me at [email protected].
SDE II @ bp
6 年That's a great idea to look forward. I have been gaming since what i can remember and that's 1 year of age and i have spent almost every day of my life gaming in cafes and home. What i can conclude for this, is that a major population in India will look for gaming cafes just for two reasons - first is of course that open environment where you can play freely, along with friends and express anger and emotions verbally(most indians can't shout at home like there),and the second reason is that people can't access the games at home that they can play over there. But being a part of many gaming communities and considering the demands of gamers across the country, an average indian gamer will never wish to play video games in a gaming cafe in the long run until the first one mentioned reason is a concern for him. Still most of the games will do for him at his home. And those with the second reason won't be the major contributors to the cafe's profit anyways. So in order to increase the numbers from 500 to 10000, an increase in real gamers would do (i am saying real gamers here) . And here by real gamers i mean those who are really countable as customers and those who are above those social barriers in india(gaming still being a taboo).
Connecting Talent with Opportunity ll Talent Sourcing ll IT Recruitment II Digital Marketeer II Academic Scholarship Awardee
6 年Vignesh Anand Krishnan
Engineer at Neptune Orient Lines
6 年Hi there i am from Dehradun n looking to expand my gaming cafe i already have PlayStation setup and now k am moving onto Gaming Pc can you plz tell me if i can get any sort of help from you guys..contact me 8077707604 Thankyou
Senior Director, Consumer Marketing at NVIDIA, APAC excl. China
6 年18-24 month for breakeven followed by positive cash flow - day and night! What an amazing business model!
Empowering the brightest Indian Gaming and Esports Companies
6 年Great observations Vamsi, look forward to India hitting the 1000 and then the 10,000 cafe landmarks soon.