The city hosts one of the nation’s first centres of excellence Image in HiTec City
HYDERABAD: Hyderabad is surging ahead as India’s premier hub for the gaming and AVGC‑XR (animation, visual effects, gaming, comics and extended reality) industry, fuelled by a strong IT ecosystem, state incentives and a vast talent pool. The city hosts one of the nation’s first centres of excellence Image in HiTec City, alongside the 1.6‑million‑square‑foot Image Towers tailored for gaming and creative‑tech firms.
India’s gaming market, valued at ₹6,715 crore in 2024, is projected to cross ₹10,487 crore by 2026 at a 24 per cent compounded annual growth rate, with global projections hitting $16 billion by 2034. The Centre’s “Building New India – Reform, Resilience, Transformation” report spotlights Hyderabad as a top gaming hotspot, rivalling Bengaluru, Mumbai and Chennai.
This boom promises huge job opportunities in Telangana, tapping into hundreds of engineering colleges and over 1,000 training institutes that produce 1.5 lakh technical graduates annually. Official data show Hyderabad alone has 120+ engineering colleges offering specialised courses in game design, AI, AR/VR, Unity and Unreal Engine. “Around 60–70 per cent of these graduates are IT‑ready, positioning Hyderabad as a talent reservoir for gaming,” said Dr Meera Nair, computer science faculty at a leading Hyderabad college.
Local entrepreneur G. Srikanth Rao, founder of a Hyderabad indie studio, highlighted the commercial edge: “Hyderabad’s IT infrastructure, cloud connectivity and full‑stack capabilities—from coding to 3D art—make it ideal for co‑development targeting Southeast Asia and global markets.”
He added that smartphone penetration, cheap data and youth‑savvy micro‑transactions are supercharging revenues, with AI‑streaming convergence making India a global testbed. For Telangana, this translates into thousands of high‑paying roles in programming, VFX and design, alongside commercial windfalls from GCCs and studios, cementing Hyderabad’s role in India’s digital gold rush.
