With 15.1% of the total gaming app downloads, Indian gaming remains the content consumption epicenter of the world. India’s 8.6 billion mobile game app downloads is more than the total app downloads of the next two biggest markets—the United States (4.3 billion) and Brazil (4.2 billion)—put together.
India is now home to 1 in every 5 gamers with a total user base of ~600 million gamers. By 2034, if India captures its share of the USD 300 billion gaming market (as of 2024), commensurate with its share of gamers and app downloads, the Indian gaming industry will be worth USD 60 billion and will create 2 million jobs.
The online gaming industry in India is transitioning from a sunrise sector to a time-honed sector delivering high growth and creating high-quality employment across various sub-national clusters. While India’s technology sector is booming—and has been for a while thanks to a slew of government initiatives to support Digital India—the gaming sector in particular is unlocking billions of dollars of economic growth.
Aside from the sector’s revenue contributions (totaling ~1% of all GST receipts received by the Government of India), estimates suggest that if India’s gaming talent, and entrepreneurial zeal continue innovating at pace, then they are on track to build and sustain a USD 60 billion industry by 2034, while creating 2 million highly skilled jobs for the sector in the process.
As these companies scale, and many of these successfully foray into the public markets, they are additionally capable of unlocking USD 26 billion of investor returns in the next 2-3 years. The Indian gaming juggernaut is going global and consolidating its global dominance—the right cocktail of entrepreneurial vision, policy incentives, and technological innovation will take this rise to new heights.
With ~20% of global gamers and 15.1% of global gaming app downloads, India consolidates its leadership in the global gaming market
A recent report supported by the Government of India estimates that by 2030, the share of the digital economy is expected to reach 20% to India’s GDP up from 11.7% in 2022-23, increasing its value to ~USD 1.2 trillion of the Indian economy share. This upward revision of the digital economy’s growing economic contribution partly explains the rise of online gaming in India.
The formidable fundamentals of the Indian digital economy will prepare India’s online gaming sector to play the long game in becoming the global gaming giant of the coming decade.
Exhibit X: Rising share of Digital Economy continues to propel India’s growth journey
Source: Estimation and Measurement Of India’s Digital Economy by Ministry of Electronics And Information Technology Government of India (MeitY) and the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER).
The numbers supporting the meteoric rise of Indian online gaming speak for themselves. With ~600 million users (or 591 million specifically), India accounts for ~20% of the world’s 3.3 billion gaming user base as of 2023 (in 2024, the global gamer base reached 3.4 billion with India’s share contributing 17.3%).
The number of gamers in India have grown at a CAGR of 10.2% during 2020-24. Further, based on total gaming app downloads, India continues to dominate the global market.
In 2024, with total game app downloads of 8.6 billion, India’s share of global downloads stands at 15.1% which is more than the total app downloads of the next two biggest markets—the United States (4.3 billion) and Brazil (4.2 billion)—put together. This is the fifth consecutive year wherein India’s share of the total downloads stayed at more than 15% of the global downloads.
It is also important to note that in India, gamers have increasingly started accessing gaming apps outside of the app store and play store using alternative distribution channels such as directly downloading apps from the websites. As per IEIC Analysis, the total game app downloads for 2024 in India could be as high as 11.2 billion as compared to only 8.6 billion captured by one source.
Based on the continued growth over several years, the gaming sector globally is firmly far ahead of the combined size of the film and music industry. This trend may replicate in India in coming years.
Exhibit 3:% Share in mobile game app downloads (2024)*
*Data.ai doesn’t have complete numbers on China Mobile App Downloads, therefore, it is not included in the exhibit
Exhibit 4: Gaming app downloads (in bn)
Note:
1) This exhibit does not have data from China since comparative data is not available on Data.ai
2) This only captures the game app downloads from app store and play stores and does not include data from games downloaded from websites directly and alternative distribution channels
Source: Data.ai
India’s Gaming Sector is a USD 60 Billion Opportunity and Ripe to be Leveraged
Despite its phenomenal advances in online gaming, as of 2024, India accounted for 1.1% of the global USD 300 billion market opportunity—indicating that its true share of the global gaming pie is waiting to be discovered and captured.
The potential growth of the sector domestically could support the expansion of the international segment—the global gaming industry grew by 8% from USD 300 billion in 2023 to reach USD 324 billion in 2024. If it continues growing at a 7% CAGR between 2024-34, it’ll touch a USD 590 billion market size internationally.
On the other hand, if it grows by 10% CAGR during this period, it’ll touch USD 780 billion. Projections suggest that if India increases its revenue share to 20% of the 2024 ~USD 300 billion global industry size (in line with its global user base and the global app download share) by 2034, we are looking at a USD 60 billion opportunity.
By targeting USD 60 billion opportunity, the sector can also increase the employment generation by 20X, increasing its job creation from ~100,000 currently, to over 2 million by 2034.
This future is possible considering the United States holds 19.3% of the market share with just 7.4% of the app downloads, Japan accounts for 8% of the market share with just 1.1% of downloads, the UK accounts for 3.4% of the market share with just 1.3% downloads, and Germany accounts for 7.2% market share with just 1.6% downloads.
Exhibit 1: India contributes 16% of global gaming downloads, but contributes only 1% of the global revenue
Source: Path Ahead for Online Skill Gaming In India Unpacking Global Standards for Regulating and Taxing Online Skill Gaming, USISPF and TMT, October 2024
Exhibit 6: India can grow the online gaming sector in India to USD 60 billion by 2034 from USD 3.1 billion (As of 31st Dec 2023)
Source: Path Ahead for Online Skill Gaming In India Unpacking Global Standards for Regulating and Taxing Online Skill Gaming, USISPF and TMT, October 2024
Online Gaming Powers the Bharat of Tomorrow, Contributing ~1% of Indirect Tax Receipts to the Exchequer
The global gaming market is an untapped opportunity for India to drive growth, particularly through exports and employment generation.
The online gaming market in India has shown remarkable agility and resilience in the face of industry headwinds in the form of a taxation hike (with online gaming taxed at 28% under India’s Goods and Services Tax, also referred to as the GST framework) and growing proliferation of illegal offshore sports betting platforms.Despite these setbacks, the gaming sector outperformed the growth estimate of 14.1% for 2024, clocking in at a robust growth of 19.6% in 2024.
What is all the more remarkable is the sector’s substantial contributions to the public exchequer even as these challenges persist. The tax revenue contributions of India’s online gaming sector have grown exponentially over the past few fiscals, jumping from INR 2,000 crore (USD 229 million) contributed to India’s GST collections in FY 2020-21, to an estimated INR 20,000 crore (USD 2.2 billion) in FY 2024-25.,This is a remarkable feat for a 5-year old sector. This noticeable increase is largely attributed to a hike in GST rates in October 2023.
With India’s current GST collections for FY 2024-25 (from April to December) standing at around INR 16.33 lakh crore (USD 190 billion), annualized for FY 2024-2025, the tax collection will be to the tune of INR 21.77 lakh crore (USD 250 billion). Therefore, the indirect tax collection from the online gaming sector alone will be to the tune of 0.92%, or ~1%, of the total GST collection, a staggering feat for a sunrise sector.
Online gaming, even though heavily taxed, is emerging as a key driver for national growth and development, fortifying the country’s economic growth in ways that few other growing sectors are. That the sector is managing to innovate, create, and grow despite these challenges, is a true testament to the resilience of its underlying fundamentals, talent, and business runways.
Exhibit 7: Online gaming sector’s contribution to GST Revenue continues to scale
The Rise of ~600 Million Mobile-First Indian Gamers: The Champions Driving a USD 9.1 Billion Market by 2029E
A combination of microtransaction-led monetization innovated by Indian companies, strong investor sentiments, and highly-skilled talent have come together to build a gaming industry on track to touch a USD 9.1 billion market size by FY29E. The Indian innovation of microtransaction-led monetization has ably solved the long-standing issue of monetizability of Indian gaming user base.
This growth of the sector is driven by business model innovations undertaken by the Pay-to-Play segment (also called Real Money Gaming or RMG) segment, which now contributes to ~86% of the sector’s revenue and has emerged as the primary growth driver for the sector.
Exhibit 8: Online gaming market exceeds expectations and to grow at a CAGR of ~20% from FY24-29E
This growth of the sector is driven by business model innovations undertaken by the Pay-to-Play segment (also called Real Money Gaming or RMG) segment, which contributes to over 85% of the sector’s revenues.
India’s ~900 Million Smartphone Users are Driving a Unique Mobile-First Gaming Market
The biggest champions of this success are India’s online gamers, whose unique consumption habits have put India’s mobile-first gaming on the global map. As of 2024, India was home to over 883 million smartphone users, out of which 591 million were gamers.
As per IEIC Analysis, what makes India stand apart from other gaming markets is the mobile-first attribute of the gaming experience. Over 92% of the users prefer to access games over mobile devices, as compared to PC (5%) and Console (3%).
This has led to an explosion of mobile-first online gaming experiences, with developers using the most cutting edge technologies to create entertainment experiences that work across a range of handsets and software (see the Game Developer Repository for a snapshot of these examples of technological prowess).
Out of this strong gamer user base, 25% of users, or 148 million gamers, are paying for the right gaming experience, and subsequently, are driving the monetization of gaming content and helping build the profitability runways of online gaming companies operating in the sector, which is currently valued at USD 3.7 billion.
Over 43% of these gamers are between 18-30 years of age and every three out of four gamers prefer vernacular content, leading to the creation of youth-savvy games that are rooted in the cultural contexts, stories, and languages of India., India is no longer simply consuming what the world offers it as ‘entertainment’—thanks to conscientious and discerning mobile-first consumers, it is catering to its own tastes, and building games for Bharat while meaningfully starting to export ‘Made in India’ games.
Exhibit 9: India is a mobile-first Gaming Market (in millions)
Source: IEIC Analysis
India’s Creator Economy is Exploding, with Growth Once Again Driven by the Online Gaming Sector’s ~467,000 Influencers
The creator economy in India has undergone a massive growth surge over the last five years, rising from just 962,000 influencers in 2020, to over 4.06 million by 2024. In tandem with this rise of the creator economy, the Government of India launched the National Creators Awards to recognize and award the digital content creators of India.
As per industry estimates, the highest growth came in the gaming sector-driven creator economy, with 213% growth between 2020 and 2022, totaling 467,000 influencers by the end of 2024. Gaming content is driven by the rise of content creators, streamers, and community-driven platforms.
These creators, through the use of new-age technology like GenAI, are at the forefront of driving content creation in India, monetizing User-Generated Content (UGC), live streaming, and brand collaborations. In the process, they are also strengthening monetisation streams for creators, and the marketing teams of gaming companies alike, building strong pathways to acquire new users and raise profitability.
The online gaming industry in India is expected to grow at a robust CAGR of ~20% during 2024-29E, up from its USD 3.7 billion market size (2024), not merely due to its ~600 million gaming userbase and consequent 15%+ global mobile app download share, but also on account of unique factors such as explosive growth in the creator economy (also driven by the gaming sector) and the unique mobile-first gaming phenomenon.
To fully understand the Indian gaming market and its growth prospects and drivers, it is pertinent to deep dive into the heterogenous and vibrant gaming ecosystem to understand how various gaming formats continue to scale in India. It is then that we will understand that the Indian gaming industry has something for all gamers, and the gaming content creation is as diverse as India’s gaming userbase.
“I started my content creator career 10 years ago and I have seen creator economy emerge and evolve. The creator economy-related jobs offer sustainable and rewarding career. As creators employ more people, the creator economy further fuels growth and job creation. Gaming is driving this growth in the creator economy”
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