80% of Indians play a mobile game on their phones daily: Vinit Karnik

Gaming and the eSports industry had been on the rise during the pre-COVID-19 times in India as well as the world. However, the global pandemic acted as an accelerant and gave a massive boost to people embracing the gaming culture as they were confined to their homes for several months at a stretch. The pandemic has fast-tracked the entire gaming movement and we are seeing people within our household, within our friends circle and colleagues who are playing games actively – be it casual gaming, serious gaming or betting games.

The panel discussion on ‘Gaming: An emerging medium for marketers’ at the recently held GAMEXX 2021 Summit & Awards focuses on how marketers can leverage the gaming medium to increase reach and engagement. Moderated by Vinit Karnik, Head - Sports, Esports and Entertainment, GroupM, South Asia, the panellists included:

Alakshit Tripathi, Industry Head - Consumer Packaged Goods, InMobi

Gazal Bajaj, Head - Media and Management, Nestle

Joydeep Basuroy, Asst. General Manager, Pernod Ricard

Kapil Ohri, Head - Digital Marketing, Dabur India Limited 

In his opening remarks, Vinit Karnik noted how India is predominantly a mobile-first market, as opposed to the global scenario, where the entire gaming industry is divided into 3 parts: Mobile, PC, and console. “The overall gaming size globally is about $150 billion, which is massive in terms of numbers. Out of this, 46% of the people worldwide who play on mobile phones, 24% play on PCs and 30% play on consoles. That’s a break-up of the global gaming industry.”

Karnik further pegged the global eSports industry at $950 million. According to him, the gaming industry in India is approximately at $750 million, of which only $10 million constitutes the eSports industry. On why eSports constituted such a small portion of the gaming industry, Karnik explained, “We all know that scale comes only when large format eSports events start happening in the physical world. The good news is that a lot of virtual eSports leads have been rapidly mushrooming in India and no sooner than we come out of the pandemic and the lockdown eases and the physical world restarts, that I think eSports is going to be invincible in India and it will be difficult to avoid for the kind of traction that we have seen over the last 15-odd months.”

Karnik informed that the online gaming community in India has been growing at 14x since 2010. Thus, the growth trend and the chatter has been there even before the pandemic struck the country over the last decade, but it is only now that marketers and media planners have started accepting the size and scale of this industry.

Speaking on the factors that are needed to sustain the growth of the gaming industry in India, Karnik said, “When I say mobile-first, from the numbers point of view 250 million mobile gamers are actively playing on their mobile phones and the prize money has increased by 123% from what we have observed since 2016. The reason why the prize money is important is that for gaming to grow as an industry, more and more people have to play games digitally on a sustained basis. Hence, the prize money has to be significant for them to look at it as a career; so, 123% is an interesting growth and a consistent growth that we have seen over the years.”

He noted that mobile gamers in India have got on an average about 3 games on their mobile phones. 22 hours is a time spent per week by an individual playing games on a mobile phone. $35.8 million is the fundraising that has happened in a start-up economy in the last 5 years. The moment you have private equity start-ups investing into an industry, you know that we are here for the long haul and looking at a very sustained scale up towards this business model. Last, but not the least, 80% of Indians play a mobile game on their phones daily. Now that’s a large number within the mobile phone ecosystem.”

Watch the entire conversation here: