The Gaming Boom Boom ; Many Indian Gaming Companies Are Developing Proprietary Products, and Some Are Even Selling These Under Their Own Names. But It'll Still Be a While Before We See an Indian Company Anywhere Near the Top of the Global Totem Pole.

Business Today › July 22, 2005

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Summary

The Reliance Webworld outlet in New Delhi's Tony New Friends Colony is unusually crowded on a hot June evening. It is hosting the zonal finals of a gaming competition organised by Reliance Infocomm. Sitting in front of flat screens, a dozen teenagers are busy playing games. Anirudh Sharma, 21, sporting long hair and a scant beard, is one of those playing FIFA soccer, a popular game. Sharma, who is preparing for the Common Admission Test is a gaming enthusiast and was a finalist in the India leg of another competition, the World Cyber Games, last July. His professional goal: setting up a gaming company after completing a post graduate diploma in business management from one of the Indian Institutes of Management.

Sharma's role model is Vishal Gondal, a game freak-turned- entrepreneur who founded Indiagames in 1999 when he was just 23. The Rs 67-crore Indiagames is the country's largest gaming company, employs 300 people, and counts global biggies like Tom Online, Cisco and Macromedia as investors. Gondal spotted the opportunity before most others (only the Bangalore-based Dhruva Interactive, set up in 1997, was in business then). But the gaming scene has become quite crowded now. Several dozen Indian companies are doing outsourced work for foreign game developers; some of them develop proprietary gaming products; and a few even sell branded games in India and abroad. Still, the country is still only a miniscule blip on the global gaming radar. According to market research firm acnielsen, the Indian gaming market is worth $50 million (Rs 220 crore); global revenues add up to $30 billion (Rs 1,32,000 crore). The US-based Electronic Arts alone had sales of $3 billion (Rs 13,200 crore) in 2004 and a market value of $20 billion (Rs 88,000 crore). Compare it to Indiagames, and you get the picture. So what's the big deal?

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The Gaming Boom Boom ; Many Indian Gaming Companies Are Developing Proprietary Products, and Some Are Even Selling These Under Their Own Names. But It'll Still Be a While Before We See an Indian Company Anywhere Near the Top of the Global Totem Pole.

Mobile telephony! That's what's driving mass gaming in India. Telecom operators say subscribers are downloading 500,000 games every month from their GPRs or WAP portals (Reliance through its R- World); this is likely to cross 1.5 million by the end of the year. "Mobile phones are making gaming a mass market phenomenon," says Pravin Pinto, GM (Marketing) at LG's CDMA Handset Division. Nasscom estimates that the Indian gaming i...

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