What you’ll learn from this report:

India has quickly become one of the most important markets that we track and is the fastest growing market by both revenue and gamers in the Asia-10 region, which Niko Partners classifies as: SEA-6 (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam), Japan, South Korea, Chinese Taipei, and India. India has the largest gamer base in the Asia-10 region and second largest in the world, behind China. India is a mobile first market that in 2016 underwent a digital revolution.

India’s nearly 400 million gamers account for over half of the 788 million gamers in Asia-10 and are a formidable force to be understood and served by developers and publishers, hardware and peripherals companies, streaming platforms, and advertisers and sponsors.

India’s gamers combined with the rest of Asia-10 gamers and China’s 702 million gamers equals to 1.5 billion gamers –nearly 20% of the worldwide population and 36% of the Asia-10 population. They are an important user base with immense growth potentials.

The report includes:

• Market model and 5 year forecast through 2026
  • Macroeconomic data
  • Revenue
  • Revenue by genre
  • Gamers
  • ARPU
• Results of our survey of more than 1,000 gamers.
• Top games
• Top publishers
• Trends
• Market developments
• Local market updates
• Esports
• Esports tournaments
• Esports teams and sponsors
• Regulatory overview
• PC ownership
• Impact of gaming on PC purchase
• PC brand and spending
• PC accessory brand
• PC game spending and payment methods
• PC gaming hours
• Console
• Top PC games
• Internet cafes
• Mobile games spending
• Top mobile games
• Mobile gaming behavior
• App stores
• Mobile payments
• 91 slides
• 30+ exhibits

Key takeaways from the analysis:

• India’s PC and mobile game markets are projected to generate player spending of US$704.5 million in 2022 with 396.4 million gamers, growing to reach US$1.4 billion in 2026 with 630 million gamers
• This excludes revenue from Real Money Gaming, which is currently an important yet separate part of India’s games market
• India is the fastest growing market in Asia-10 for both revenue and gamers and it is also the second largest games market in the world by gamers, behind China
• India is a mobile first market with 98.8% of gamers playing on the platform, accounting for 85% of total market revenue. Data costs in India are the lowest in the world and 5G has started rolling out this year.
• India gamers spend an average of 14.1 hours per week on mobile games and India has the highest proportion of mobile gamers across the Asia-10 region that play over 5 hours per week
• Propensity to pay has increased with a higher number of spenders and higher spending per paying user. 34% of gamers in India spent money on games in 2022
• 2023 will have a lower growth rate than 2022 because this will include the first full year impact of BGMI’s ban. The growth rate could be revised down if additional mobile games are banned in 2023