Mirza Mohammed Ali Khan The online mobile gaming segment in India has a lot of potential and must be tapped, said Amitabh Kant, CEO, NITI Aayog.

“The gaming industry has got massive potential. I think the experience with chess, cricket... all these games demonstrate that this is an area that India must tap,” Kant told BusinessLine .

He also met a delegation from online gaming app Mobile Premier League (MPL) and the winners of an online speed chess tournament organised by the app earlier this month.

“They (online games) should be synchronised with real matches that go on. And if the real world and the gaming world is synchronised together, you will see a huge boom,” said Kant.

Online gaming apps that integrate multiple games on a single platform are gaining ground in India. Such apps also offer users the opportunity to win real money by performing well in gaming tournaments on a daily basis. Such tournaments may also have an entry fee.

Sai Srinivas Kiran, Co-founder and CEO of MPL, said that their industry has been helped by low data costs and digital payments becoming easier. However, he said that it is time e-sports is accepted and acknowledged widely. “For starters, we ourselves are trying to figure out ways in which we can create some kind of a scholarship (for e-sports),” Kiran said.

Kiran was also hopeful of a push from the government with regard to the policies around e-sports and such platforms over the next few years. He said the idea was to create a neutral representative organisation for the segment.

“We are working with multiple different industry bodies. We are talking to multiple different players in the industry, to get all of these things together and make one single representation,” said Kiran.

Push for open platform

Gaming developers and their products are a big focus area in this segment and Kiran said the idea going forward would be to have an open platform where developers can make any game and “publish it on the fly”.

Kant also batted for gaming developers getting such platforms to showcase their products to a global audience. “A new world of gaming creators can emerge from India and they have the massive potential of capturing the world because the gaming industry is only going to grow and expand,” he said.