India to see growth of mobile gaming

Mumbai: With the proliferation of smart phones in India, the mobile gaming market is set to witness a similar growth as seen by the e-commerce industry with venture capital funds and private equity funds willing to finance emerging talent in this space.

Within a span of just two years, industry experts pointed out that around 50-60 mobile gaming start-ups from even tier II and tier III cities have cropped up in the industry.  
The mobile gaming industry in India, which is now estimated to be in the range of Rs 600 -700 crore is growing at a rate of 25-30 per cent per annum. According to a report by KPMG, the mobile gaming market in India is poised to touch Rs1,700 crore by 2016.

Recently, Silicon Valley fund Sequoia Capital invested $15 million or Rs 90 crore in Octro, a Delhi based gaming start-up.

“This is one of the fastest growing industries in India at the moment growing at an annual rate of around 30 per cent. In the next 2-3 years, the growth would be even much higher with the introduction of faster data network and better quality smart phones entering the market,” said Nitish Mittersain, CEO of Nazara Technologies, one of the leading mobile games developers in India.

“What we are seeing is that fresh college graduates from even smaller cities like Pune and Indore to name a few are showing keen interest and coming out with innovative games on mobile platforms. We are already in talks with 2-3 start-ups to fund their activities. We will scale up our fund size by another Rs 5 crore going forward as we are willing to invest wherever we find good quality,” said Mr Mittersain adding that his firm would be investing Rs 100 crore in next two years to scale up its business in India, Middle East and Africa.