The best time to invest in a sector is when it violates a narrative. When Lumikai GPs, Justin Shriram Keeling and Salone Sehgal ideated Lumikai Fund 20 months back, they had heard many narratives.
- India is a DAU farm
- Indians don’t pay for games
- There is no depth in the market in terms of dealflow
- There is no gaming talent
- Where will the unicorns come from?
- How will you exit companies?
- India is a net importer of games
- India can’t justify a sector-focused interactive VC strategy
However, they saw key market inflexion points. Some of which are traced in our previous blog post — India’s Cambrian Explosion Moment.
Since Lumikai’s launch in August 2020, we have witnessed $1.5Bn infused in the Indian games market, 3 unicorns (including 1 publicly-traded company which was 175x over-subscribed at IPO); multiple global games strategics acquiring Indian companies (MTG — Playsimple, Stillfront — Moonfrog, Flutter — Junglee etc.) and the emergence of 500+ game developers (up from 25 three years back) and still growing fast.
But data around market size, monetisation, willingness to pay, ARPUs of Indians remained a black box. Until now.
For the last couple of months, we’ve been working closely with our partners Redseer Consulting, AWS, and Epic Games to put together the most comprehensive deep-dive piece on the Indian Gaming market to date. Today, we are proud to announce that “Leveling Up- India’s Gaming Market 2021” is now available for public viewing!
The report utilizes the largest survey ever conducted of Indian gamers, along with proprietary Lumikai data and expert insights, to paint a picture of the current state of the Indian gaming market — across size, monetization, user behaviour, and estimates of future growth.
Some key highlights include:
- The Indian gaming market is estimated at $2.2 B in 2021 and is expected to more than triple to $7 B by 2026. Much of this growth is expected to be driven by growth in mid-core, core, and casual genres.
- IAP monetization accounts for $550M of the current market — outstripping ad monetization. It is also expected to compete with and surpass RMG-based monetization in the coming years as the primary form of monetization.
- There are approximately 450M gamers in India, with an approximate paying user conversion of 20%. This implies that there are ~100M gamers who actively pay in and for games. Our surveys indicated average yearly spending of $16/year per user. Propensities to pay are even higher in mid-core and core genres, with the paying users spending $7-$14 per month.
- Novel forms of monetization such as virtual gifting, tipping, and subscriptions are seeing early signs of traction. Average order values across gifting and tipping are estimated to be $4-$10. Users also expressed a higher willingness to play games with vernacular and uniquely-Indian themes.
The findings underscore the massive untapped potential across India’s gaming market. If you’re building a gaming or interactive media business let’s chat — you can reach the team directly at: hello@lumikai.com.
You can download full access to the report here.
