Last week, I spoke to Roby John, CEO and co-founder, SuperGaming, to discuss the evolution of gaming in India and the business side of things – the challenges and the opportunities.

This discussion was part of the #BringYourOwnTake series where interesting people, well, bring their own take.

According to a 2021 RedSeer report, gaming in India is a $2.2B market that is expected to hit $7B by 2026. 100 million Indian users paid for games in 2021 which is expected to increase 3x in the next 5 years. This exceeds the previous estimates on the scale and propensity to pay. Clearly, India’s gaming market is at a once-in-a-generation inflection point.

Roby also shared his perspective on monetization via subscriptions and IAP. According to Roby, in-app monetization is growing very rapidly, outstripping ad monetization. The latter disrupts the flow of the game, and he called it an ‘interrupt-based monetization’. Roby’s comments, of course, were based on SuperGaming’s success with mobile games like MaskGun and Silly Royale.

There are ~100 million gamers who actively pay in and for games, and the propensity to pay is even higher in mid-core and core genres with the paying users spending $7-$14 per month. India, for two years running, has seen the highest proportion of first-time paying users, over 50% year-on-year, out of any country in the world.

And, of course, we did talk about Indus.  

Last month, the company premiered the trailer of its upcoming Indus – Battle Royale game at Times Square in New York City. The much hyped unveil was widely seen as the company’s intent to put India on the global gaming map – both in content as well as form. The game will be available for mobile, PC, and consoles, instead of focusing on mobile since India is primarily a mobile gaming market.

Roby says that while Indian mythology is fairly known, Indian sci-fi is nonexistent globally. Like in other areas of entertainment on the internet, sooner or later, Indian gamers will also seek content that identifies with Indian culture and identity. The 'Indo-Futurism' theme of Indus is a step in that direction, like Black Panther and Wakanda were for Afro-Futurism.

This, and a lot more... with a lot of fun insights and trivia. Of course, Roby also shared more information about SuperGaming, his experience of building bestselling mobile games, and what all a gaming studio entails. You can listen to the hour long recording of #BringYourOwnTake with Roby John on Twitter Spaces here.

Photo by Anwar Hakim