Bridging the talent gap. India’s path to a $70-billion gaming industry: GDAI President

 Globally, the video game industry is $300 billion per year, larger than the music, movie, and OTT industries combined. It’s a large industry that the Indian government is starting to focus on. However, India doesn’t have a big chunk of this market.

This presents a massive opportunity for the country. Despite not having a large share of the global gaming market, India has a massive amount of talent that can be leveraged to capture a larger market share.

One of the main reasons India has not traditionally captured the gaming market is because consoles used to be expensive, and people didn’t play video games. That has changed in the last 12–15 years with mobile phones becoming commonplace.  

India now has almost 600 million people who play video games on their phones, with about 45 per cent of them being women. In fact, 15 per cent of all video game players worldwide are Indian. The opportunity is in building games.

The gaming and interactive entertainment industry in India this year is about ₹10,000–11,000 crore. This revenue comes from in-game advertisements and people buying items within the games, split roughly 50:50.

The complaint against the gamers in the country that they don’t spend on playing games. This is changing very fast. This represents significant growth from 2017 when the industry was only about ₹400–500 crore.

This makes it the fastest-growing consumer market in India.

There are currently at least 1,000 gaming companies in India, up from around 100 companies five years ago. As the domestic market keeps increasing, many young people will enter the market because they are players who want to develop their own games.

The primary challenges are twofold: lack of talent and lack of incubation opportunities. While there are a lot of passionate people, there are not enough trained or skilled people because the education system has traditionally only focused on engineering.

For example, there are about 6 million video game developers globally, but India only has 25,000. To address the talent shortage, the Game Developers Association of India is aggressively requesting the government to take multiple initiatives. Starting IIT-caliber institutes or colleges that would attract highly talented students. 

Introducing minor electives in video game development at all the premium institutes in India.  Getting the six National Institutes of Design (NID) to introduce a gaming curriculum as a degree, as gaming is currently an afterthought at all NIDs.

On the incubation side, the industry and government need to provide funding and support to early-stage seed-level startups. While there are a couple of small initiatives, like the IMAGE incubator in Hyderabad, more are needed.

 Funding is readily available at various stages and amounts. Seventy-five global and local investors are coming to the India Game Developers Conference (IGDC) and meeting with 200-plus gaming companies, meaning there are two companies for every investor. Funding is available from ₹25 lakh to around ₹20 crore. Because gaming is a sunrise sector, funding is not a constraint.

 Ideally, the government should not regulate the gaming industry too much because it is still a young industry. The government should support the industry without obstructing its development.

There needs to be a clear distinction between gaming where people put cash in and cash out, and video gaming and interactive entertainment where people play for fun. These are two very different consumer needs and industries, and policymakers need to understand this.

Policies should encourage talent development and the inclusion of gaming in school and engineering college curriculums.  To encourage job creation, the government should also invite global companies to set up capability centers in India. If the talent development is done correctly, the gaming sector could create at least 1 million jobs.

 This distinction needs to be tackled at three levels. The Central and State governments need to educate people about the distinction between gaming and video gaming. Media influencers need to start making a distinction between gaming and video gaming in their coverage so the general public will start to understand the difference.

When speaking at industry forums, it’s important to constantly remind people of the distinction between gaming and video gaming. Because it takes time to change behaviour, it will require a constant effort to educate people about this distinction. 

 The Indian gaming market is currently only worth ₹11,000 crore, which is only about 1 per cent of the global market. However, there is an opportunity to capture as much as 20–25 per cent of the global market in the next 15 years. If the right policy decisions are made and investments are made in talent, India could bring in $70–80 billion in gaming revenue. 

It’s important to note that India is becoming a mature market. If India does not invest in building its own content, other countries will create content for India. With 15 per cent of the world’s gamers and downloads coming from India, it is a lost opportunity if Indian developers are not serving the Indian market.