50% of Indian gamers are of 18-30 years

Indian gaming industry poised for strong growth: projected to reach $7.5 Bn by FY28

FinTech BizNews Service 

Mumbai, November 3, 2023: Lumikai, a gaming venture capital fund, has announced the release of its annual State of India Gaming Report FY23, in collaboration with Google.

The Indian gaming industry clocked $3.1 Bn in FY23 and is set to hit $7.5 Bn by FY28. The report anticipates that the industry will grow at a CAGR of 20%, driven primarily by growth in-app purchases in casual and midcore games and growing in-game advertising revenues.

India is home to 568 million gamers, of which 25% are paying users. The growth in paying users has seen an increase of 17% YoY. With 15.4 billion downloads in FY23, India retained its position as one of the top countries globally for mobile game downloads.

While we saw the suspension of BGMI and Free Fire in FY23, in-app revenue outside of these two games witnessed a 37% year-on-year surge. This was on account of steadily increasing monetization across other casual and midcore games, indicating a growing propensity by Indian gamers to explore new IPs.
In-app purchases and ad revenues are expected to drive growth on account of structural shifts towards higher propensity to pay in-game, and growing prominence of casual and midcore games by FY28. RMG revenue grew by 33% in FY23, however given recent taxation policies, we expect RMG growth to slow down on account of heavy tax liabilities and consolidation in the industry. RMG revenue grew by $500 Mn in FY23, but this segment is expected to face headwinds in the coming years due to recent taxation policies and industry consolidation. Due to these reasons, we expect growth in this segment to be muted.

Key Insights Of Survey 

We also conducted a survey of over 2000 gamers in India and obtained key insights on user behaviour and demographics:

•  50% of gamers in the country fall within the age bracket of 18-30 years, with a male-to-female ratio of roughly 60:40.
•  The average time spent on gaming increased by 20% YoY, to 10-12 hours per gamer per week.
•  Users stated that their key reasons to play games was to relax and socialise with other gamers. Completion of a game’s objectives and seeing too many ads were quoted as key reasons to stop playing a game.
•  Over 40% of users stated that they’ve now graduated beyond casual games to play other genres.
•  Roughly 60% of users stated that they purchased IAPs in game, with 62% claiming that UPI is their preferred mode of payment.