Riding on the huge fillip that it got from the pandemic, the gaming industry has finally arrived. The industry, which faced a bleak future with not many people were willing to pay to play, has registered revenues of $2.6 billion this year.
With an arm of half a billion gamers, who clocked 15 billion gaming apps, the gaming industry is now bustling with activity. The number of gamers went up to 507 million from 450 million in the previous year.
“It is set to reach $8.6 billion in the next five years, growing at a CAGR of 27 per cent,” Salone Sehgal, Founding General Partner of Lumikai, told Business Line.
Lumikai, a venture capital fund focusing on the gaming and interactive media industries, has released the first look ‘State of India Gaming FY 2022’ at the India Game Developers Conference (IGDC) Summit inaugurated here on Wednesday.
“We have collected the data from primary and secondary sources, besides interviewing people that matter to get the insights,” she said.
Interestingly, the revenues from non-real money game segment constituted nearly 50 per cent. “The in-app purchase segment is the fastest growing segment among the revenue drivers,” she said.
“Mid-core games like Free Fire were the fastest growing gaming category, registering a growth of 32 per cent and with an aggregate revenue of $550 million,” she said.
Funding
The gaming companies in the country are on track to raise $513 million during the financial year 2022-23.
“Web3 emerged as an increasingly popular technology in games, with 30 per cent of 450 Indian Web3 companies operating in gaming. Web3 games in India have raised about $400 million in funding during 2019 and 2022,” the report said.
Another interesting factor is, the share of India-based content is growing. About 80 per cent of gamers showing interest to play games based on Indian intellectual property.
The sharp surge in the number of gamers is attributed to significant increase in the number of female gamers. “The Male-female ratio is put at 60:40 in metros and non-metros,” Justin Shriram Keeling, Founding General Partner, Lumikai, said.
