As the country with the largest population in the world, India has a young and rapidly growing population structure, making it a vast and highly potential user pool for the gaming industry.
Due to having one of the most significant young populations globally, India is expected to become one of the top markets for the gaming industry.
Currently, 62% of India's population are internet users, and 40% are gamers, with the number of gamers now reaching 568 million. Among them, 10% of the population are currently paying gamers, and this ratio is expected to grow at an annual rate of 17%.
In terms of downloads, India is currently the second largest gaming market, with a total game download volume of 15.4 billion in 2023. The ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User) reached $19.2 in 2023.
It is worth mentioning that the number of gamers in rural India seems to be expanding, with 66% of gamers coming from rural areas and only 34% from urban areas in 2023.
The total output value of the Indian gaming industry in 2023 is $3.1 billion, and according to market forecasts, the overall scale is expected to double to $7.5 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 15.68% during the forecast period.
In the Indian gaming market, real money games are the most significant part of the Indian gaming market, accounting for two-thirds of the overall scale.
However, under recent regulatory and taxation actions in India, the growth prospects of the real money gaming market are not clear, but the compound annual growth rate during 2023 to 2028 is unlikely to exceed 5%;
Even so, by 2028, India's real money gaming market will exceed $5 billion.
It is believed that friends who are new to the industry may not understand what real money games are; why they can explode in India; what the regulatory attitude in India is; and how we as practitioners can enter this $5 billion market.
PASA will explain these one by one and hopes to use this article to gradually lead everyone into the path to "getting rich" in the Indian real money gaming market.
Real Money Games—Gambling Products Under India's Grey Regulation
As is well known, for various reasons, India's legal system is very imperfect, and India's online gambling and gaming laws are very complex.
India's online gambling regulatory framework is not uniform across the entire Indian Federation and each state.
The main federal law currently governing gambling in India is the Public Gambling Act of 1867, which prohibits all activities of operating or managing public gambling houses.
However, since this law is too outdated, it was enacted before the advent of the internet and does not specifically mention online gambling, creating a grey area.
Because each state in India has the right to enact its own gambling-related laws.
For example, Sikkim and Nagaland are among the few states that have enacted laws to regulate and license online gambling and skill games.
Maharashtra completely prohibits online gambling under the Bombay Wager Act.
Goa and Daman allow certain forms of legal gambling, but the focus is mainly on physical casinos.
But in all Indian laws, a major distinction in the definition of gambling is between "skill games" and "games of chance".
Skill games are usually considered legal, but most states prohibit gambling games (such as lotteries and most forms of gambling), especially online games. (Of course, many Indian players use offshore gambling platforms, although some states have begun to crack down on these platforms, but many are still operating because there is no clear federal state law prohibiting these platforms.)
Real money games endowed with "skill" have thus developed rapidly in India.
Real money games refer to games where players play games with real money bets and can earn real money through victory or participation.
These games cover a wide range, and the real money games that are popular in India are those that need to be endowed with "skill", so the main types are real money card and puzzle games, such as Dou Dizhu, Mahjong, Texas Hold'em, or other games where players play online against other players, and the outcome determines the player's financial gain or loss.
According to PASA's understanding, currently in India, a large part of those doing "real money games" are the same people who were doing "cash loans" in India two years ago. Affected by the pandemic, India's economic activities have been severely hit, and the bad debt rate of cash loans continues to rise, while the market share of real money games has been increasing during this period.
In this context, many entrepreneurs of "cash loans" in India, in order not to lose too much, must look for other money-making projects, and real money games are undoubtedly one of the most suitable projects at this stage.
According to Indian local gaming industry practitioners, during the two years from 2017 to 2018, the overall revenue of India's real money gaming industry grew from nearly 80 billion rupees (about 1.2 billion US dollars) to 142.7 billion rupees (about 20 billion RMB), with an annual growth rate of about 78%.
The rapidly developing market, extremely high profitability, very short product launch cycles, and promotion channels that highly overlap with cash loan businesses; when these factors come together, it is not surprising that the big names who used to cheer for "cash loans" have transformed into "real money game" evangelists.
Although the nature of these games is still controversial, internet giants with a keen sense of smell have already started to seize the opportunity.
Tencent invested $100 million in India's famous sports betting game platform "Dream11" in 2018.
The general gameplay of Dream11 is to let users select players to form a team before the match starts, and the score is based on the performance of the selected players in the actual match, then the teams are ranked based on the accumulated score at the end of the match.
After users place their bets, the money rolls into a public fund pool, and the winnings are distributed according to the ranking after deducting the service fee from the funds in the prize pool.
However, "Dream11" has now been removed from Google Play, mainly because it is related to Google's developer policy.
Due to Google Play's policy on real money games, related game apps cannot be launched on Google Play.
But many Indian users still seek to download from the game's official website, and it is estimated that this game now has over 100 million users.
But it is worth noting that this is not yet the most popular game in India.
Classification of Real Money Games
From the perspective of product classification, real money games in India are mainly composed of four categories: card games, gambling games, intellectual quiz games, and sports betting, like "Dream11" belongs to the category of sports betting.
And the type of real money games that Indian users prefer more are card games, among which Rummy and Teen Patti poker games are the most popular in India.
Rummy games have a long history in India and have been a widely popular form of entertainment even before the proliferation of smartphones.
Because it focuses more on the flexible application of players' strategies in the game, Rummy is classified as a skill game, which means that in India, users can legally play Rummy games, and manufacturers releasing Rummy games are not subject to any regulation.
Some advertising materials on Indian social media also show the popularity of Rummy games in India, with some videos exaggeratedly showing people's love for Rummy games, and they will pick up their phones to play a game anytime, anywhere during work and life.
Because it is legal to conduct real money transactions, Rummy game advertising materials often unabashedly display various elements related to money, such as gold coins, diamonds, rapidly growing account balances, etc., constantly hinting to users to "make big money" through the game.
Some Rummy games also add social elements to the game, starting from the perspective of casual gambling, highlighting themes such as "making friends", "online chat", and "multiplayer competition" in advertisements, attracting more user circles.
And another card game, known as the Indian version of "Exploding Kittens", Teen Patti, is no less popular than Rummy.
Although it is defined as a non-skill game and therefore cannot be presented directly as a real money game, due to vague regulation, manufacturers can still realize monetization through methods such as virtual coin exchange for cash.
Teen Patti and Rummy have a high degree of overlap in player groups, and the advertising promotion also shows similar material strategies to Rummy games.
By showing withdrawal records directly and bluntly telling users that this game can make money, it directly and brutally points out the needs of users in the context of India's economic downturn, quickly arousing users' desires.
The TVC in the form of an interview shows that the game's players come from all walks of life, including many successful high-end professionals, which has a high penetration in society, further enhancing the trust of players.
And among them, due to different specific gameplay, card games can be further subdivided into Teen Patti, Rummy, and other types of card games, gambling games can be divided into poker, slot machines, Bingo, and other types of gambling games; intellectual quiz games are mainly represented by games like Loco; sports betting games are even more diverse, with products in cricket, football, basketball, wrestling, and other types.
The real money games on the Indian market are basically based on these two card games, such as:
"Teen Patti by Octro": Just on the Google Play platform alone, the user download count exceeds 50 million+, with over 1.44 million reviews. "TeenPatti by Octro" has multiple game modes, in addition to Hindi and English, it also adds Gujarati and Marathi as four game languages.
"Teen Patti Gold" and "Teen Patti by Octro" belong to the first tier of teen patti products: Just on the Google Play platform alone, the user download count exceeds 50 million+, with over 1.33 million reviews. This game can run on 2G networks and provides game voices in languages other than English, including Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Telugu, Urdu, and Bengali, etc.
"Junglee Rummy": In 2019, Junglee Games had 25 million users, with a total transaction amount of $600 million. Among them, just the Google platform "Junglee Rummy" alone has over 10 million downloads.
"Rummy 13 Cards: Ace2Three": India's first online Rummy portal fully owned and operated by Head Digital Works Private Limited. The company was established in 2005, and according to its official website, Ace2Three has 12 million users, with over 10 million downloads just on the Google platform. Additionally, as the earliest operating Rummy portal website, Ace2Three still retains the web version of the game platform, and users can directly log in to the official website to play the game.
In addition, there are also some Texas Hold'em and puzzle-type real money games.
"Zynga Texas Hold'em": Just on the Google platform alone, the download count exceeds 50 million times.
"POP! Slots": One of the best-performing slot machine games in the Indian market. Just on the Google store alone, the download count exceeds 10 million times.
"Bingo Showdown": One of the best-performing bingo games in the Indian market, with over 5 million downloads just on the Google store.
"Loco": An intellectual quiz game that combines live quiz, playing games, and game live streaming. On Loco, you can watch game live streams, videos, such as PUBG Mobile, "Call of Duty" live streams; currently, just on the Google store, this platform has over 10 million downloads.
After seeing these real money games, it is not difficult to find that real money games can attract users because they are real gold—really can make money.
Therefore, how we highlight this unique money-making feature is the key to our game attracting more users.
Capturing the Characteristics of Indian Real Money Game Users—Making Targeted Placements
Looking at this year's total download volume, India has surpassed China to become the main consumer of mobile games. India's current market size is nearly 2.5 times that of China and three times that of the United States. Last year's game download volume was 15 billion (15 billion) times. In terms of this year's global game download volume, India's proportion is the most considerable (17%).
At the same time, India has affordable mobile data on a global scale. For the same data, the average cost per GB in India is $0.26, while in the UK it is $6.66, and in the US it is $12.37. It has led to an increase in internet usage, with 46% of the population currently using the internet frequently.
That is to say, to enter the Indian market, the main channel direction is mobile.
In India, Android devices account for over 95% of the Indian mobile device market share, and the configurations are generally not high, and due to the official channel rules' sensitivity to real money games, many game publishers usually do not rely on the Google Play channel like other regional game publishers.
Some real money game advertisements do not guide users to the app store but to other web pages, guiding users to download games through web pages.
In these web pages, some can be run directly on the Web, while others are similar to product official websites or marketing H5 pages.
In these landing pages, users can get a text message with a download link by filling in their mobile phone number, or directly download the APK file from the website to install the game, thus bypassing the Google Play store.
Some advertisements also use the Indian people's love for socializing to direct traffic to the Facebook page, then guide users to download and register through content marketing on social media, and fully utilize users' social networks during the game process for dissemination.
At the same time, according to what we mentioned above, the user profiles of Rummy and Teen Patti are very similar, and both have high popularity. Some games will include both types and even more other types of card games during promotion, covering a large number of related search keywords to increase the exposure of the game crowd.
And in terms of game gameplay design, most games choose to follow the traditional
