The online casual gaming segment in India is projected to grow at 29 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) during FY21-25 to reach Rs 16,900 crores, according to a KPMG report in India. Currently, the segment stands at Rs 6,000 crores in FY21, accounting for 44 percent of the total online gaming revenues. The report, titled ‘Beyond the tipping point – A primer on Casual gaming in India’, said that by FY25, online casual gaming would be the largest sub-segment amongst the online gaming segment in India, contributing 58 percent to the overall revenues. Growth would be led by a continued increase in consumption, robust brand interest, and maturity of the Indian gamer in terms of consumer spends.
The KPMG report said that India had the highest game downloads in the casual mobile gaming sub-segment in the world (excluding China) in 2020, with Q1-Q3 2020 downloads standing at 7.3 billion, accounting for 17 percent of the global mobile game downloads. The online gaming segment has grown at a rapid pace in the last 3-4 years in India and is now at par with more traditional forms of entertainment in terms of the time spent on media and entertainment in a day. The COVID-19 pandemic also pushed the growth as people have been forced to stay indoors for over a year.
Further, the monthly active users for the top 100 mobile games and the time spent on online gaming, are higher by 10-15 percent post the first lockdown in 2020. Gamers across demographics took to online gaming as a means to connect with family and friends, with the supply side also playing its part, in terms of multiple titles getting multiplayer features, with a social layer to them, to encourage group consumption, the report said.
With India experiencing a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic currently, it is envisaged that the consumption of online casual gaming is likely to continue being robust, helped by the strong digital infrastructure that India has, and the continued investments by Indian and global developers and publishers in making world-class games available to the Indian gamer, according to the report. Further, with PUBG Mobile making a comeback to India as Battlegrounds Mobile India, the mobile gaming sector is likely to pick in up the next few months as it will bring back thousands of casual gamers who played PUBG Mobile to hang out with their friends virtually.
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