 Hello and welcome everyone to the virtual conference on how online gaming has benefited from the lockdown by Entrepreneur India. I'm Pritima Bhardwaj, Project Head Webinars at Entrepreneur. Today's discussion will revolve around at a time when people are stuck at home with so much time. Online gaming has seen an unprecedented surgeon interest still in nascent stages in India. The pandemic has put the focus firmly on the innumerable opportunities that lie within the industry. Let me start by laying out the ground rules for attendees. This discussion will go on for one of 15 minutes. This will be followed by a question and answer session for next 15 to 20 minutes. If you have any questions during the course of the discussion, you can pose them through the Q&A option at the bottom of your screen. Mention in your question if it is directed at any specific panelist. We will take up questions for the panel discussion. Please participate in poll during the webinar. We would also like to request the attendees to keep the questions within the scope of the discussion here today and not pitch their businesses. Let me now introduce Mr. Dhoomarya, the Editor-in-Chief of Entrepreneur India and Asia Pacific who would give the welcome note. Over to you, Ritu. Thank you, Pritima, and a very good afternoon to everyone from the gaming fraternity. You know, we've been doing a lot of webinars and we've been talking to lots of industries, but I can tell you this, that this is perhaps the only industry where our data has shown some great spurt. And we're talking about, you know, this industry as if everything was no lockdown and there was nothing wrong in the world. And it's good to see an industry in the boom time. The only industry where I saw this kind of spike was probably in edtech. And of course, you know, edtech and gaming is probably somehow going to merge in the coming times with gamification and education becoming all the more important. But having said that, I was just seeing some data around how gaming has changed and I came across some extremely interesting facts. One of course is that online, it is almost as popular as music is. So people listen to the same amount of music as they play games and its usage is only second to social media, which is really, really a lot. It's, today it accounts particularly since the lockdown, it has accounted for pretty much 35% for all app downloads that have been happening. 74% of the consumer spend that is happening online today is probably happening in gaming and 10% of all time spent in apps, which was never the case earlier. And in fact, I mean, the industry is so gung-ho about the growth that it is expected that if it continues to grow in this space, even if it falls down a little bit after the lockdown that by 2021, there would be at least a spend on, people will spend about $180 billion on mobile games, which is like a lot. It's like the industry to invest in. In fact, I think these figures are probably also prompting both new age investors as well as traditional investors like your Blackstones and Goldman Sachs to invest in more hyper-casual gaming market which continues to dominate the market. Of course, just prior to the lockdown, we had also seen sports gaming becoming very, very big but of course with gaming events now postponed indefinitely, we don't know how that spike will happen. But again, I mean, if I were to look at the larger pie, then certainly it's looking very positive and very, very large. Also at the same time, what is interesting to see is that the average age of a mobile gamer is probably about 36 years today. This used to be about 27 years earlier back in 2015 or something and today about 51% female imagined more are playing at 49% of males are actually playing online games. So good to see the female forces busy playing games there, not just cooking at home. And also the one third of all the gamers are aged between 36 to 50 years within it. And I think what really makes this industry really, really very exciting from an investment perspective, from a business perspective is that it is easy to establish, it's easy to establish a gaming studio. Of course ideas have to be very, novice ideas have to be very, very exciting for a gaming business or a gaming startup to do well. But on the other side, on an investment side, there are less investment involved. A gaming studio is relatively cheaper to put up linen e-commerce setup. And probably also that it's a very data-led model. So you can actually quantify what kind of business and what volumes of interest generation and therefore revenues are happening in the business. Therefore it's very easy and as I said, both traditional as well as new set of investors are interested in it. In fact, we're just going to have Kalari speak and tell us about why they feel gaming is a great sector from a trend perspective. We have some great, we have a stellar lineup of speakers here today who represent the various shades of the gaming world. And they're going to give you some great insights today. So welcome once again to the e-gaming webinar here that we've organized for you. And we look forward to some great time, great questions, great interaction happening and great insights by our speakers. Welcome once again. Over to you Pratima. Thank you, Ritu. So we start with the first keynote session. Our speaker for this session is Mr. Manish Agarwal, CEO, Nazara Technologies. Mr. Agarwal will be speaking on the evolution of online gaming. This session is for about 20 minutes followed by a Q&A session. Please post your questions in the Q&A panel about and mentioned at the bottom of your screen. Over to you Mr. Agarwal. Thanks Pratima. Thanks Ritu. Can you guys hear me all? Yes, of course. All right. So Pratima, you said something which was very interesting. You said gaming is still very nascent. One of the reasons I thought, let me use this COVID lockdown to show some grays on my beard and some grays on my locks. I've been talking about gaming is going to take off since last decade, I think 2011. And it has been this whole thing of that, India is a sleeping tiger and it's going to really be awakened very soon. And I remember talking in multiple conferences which I've stopped doing because I got tired of saying that India is going to happen, India is going to happen, China is happening. So it is heartening to see that you're still saying it's nascent. Yeah, so there's a lot of more effort to do and I think a lot of other panelists who are a decade younger to me, they don't see the same state as what I've seen in the last decade. So yeah, gaming I think is happening. Gaming is happening and I don't think there's any doubt in anybody's mind in the gaming industry even before COVID that gaming was happening. I'm glad that this has really this unfortunate event which we are all kind of logged now has brought gaming to mainstream and into the mainstream thinking of a lot of people because of absence of live sports happening and other industries really kind of relatively showing some kind of despair and people finding that little ray of hope amongst all the gloom and doom stories which people keep hearing. And I think gaming is one of those industries besides education tech, which really people see a hope to cling on and that's why we are all suddenly in demand. So for us, it is nice to see. It is nice to see the indication of a long decade personally for me where I believe that gaming in India would be far bigger as an entertainment option than anything else. So I think it's a good moment for all of us to really kind of get into it and then really look at what is the model. I think Ritu mentioned something very interesting. She mentioned about the age of people who are playing games and I've been really tired talking to a lot of, answering a lot of brand managers, answering a lot of agencies, that gaming is equal to kids. So we will not really be participating in a rising in gaming. Ritu, if you are okay, I would like to have you as chief evangelist of gaming because all the data points you said are so apt and so nicely put across that you should really have a forum where you get all the brand marketeers from all the reputable MNCs, my erstwhile MNC where I used to work. Oh sure. And please evangelize gaming because gaming is not equal to kids. I have explained it to multiple people and you said average is 27, pre-COVID now it is 36. To me, the reason I went to gaming, honestly in 2011, 12, is, no, in 2014 is when I saw India will happen on gaming was when I went to Lucknow, which is my hometown and I saw my mom playing games. So 2014 was a moment for me. I said, holy shit, what is she playing? And then I said, hello, what is this? She said, no, I have a score to do. And I had never seen my mom talking about a mobile game so passionately. And I said, what's why are you so enchanted? She said, no, there's a pity in my kitty, some people are playing and hence I really kind of got into it. And to me, that was kind of a fascination that my mom who was not using WhatsApp at that point of time had lashed on to Candy Crush because of word of mouth and playing on a mobile phone which was very, I think, early standards smartphone. And I said, this is where the gaming has to happen and which is when in my previous avatar I was focused on US and European markets on gaming. And then I said, this is the time in 2014, 15, when one should start focusing on India market and gaming is about to happen. So I think gaming was always being done all across age groups. And today it's even more pronounced. Whether you're looking at people playing virtual cricket, they're missing their own cricket outside or they want to relive their childhood through Karim or they are really kind of playing something else. From that perspective, I think today the age group is cutting across. I would broadly tell you what has been the opportunity and challenges of COVID. Life is always a mixed bag. It is never that you will always be on one particular axis and you're moving forward. The flavor of the, as again, you mentioned was sports fantasy, which was really kind of darling of the market last 18 months, 24 months. And suddenly everybody was kind of talking about sports fantasy. I think the life sports or dependency has been there. And if you kind of really are totally 100% dependent, your revenues are dependent on one life sports. It was unthinkable. It was a scenario when somebody does MBA like me, does a risk modeling and says that, okay, what's the probability of this happening? A 1% probability that entire world will have no life sports, you will say, no, not 1%. It may be 0.1%. And then you will do a two hours intellectual discussion on that particular aspect, right? But that is reality now. It has happened and then all those scenarios, all those scenarios are being discussed. So what has happened is that new business models have now really come into the fore. I think the whole aspects of esports, which has really kind of become very sexy to say. Now everybody is kind of talking about esports from all the brands which really didn't understand to all the people, investors who are looking at esports to various definitions of esports, which is interestingly emerged. People doing tournaments around games, calling them esports or people doing just a multiplayer game, calling them esports or a virtual cricket game being called as esports. So you have a variety of definition of esports, right? But that's really good thing because when more people talk about the terminology, as we used to say when I was an FMCG, the true test of your brand being really popular is that there any more fakes happening in the market, right? So today, if a lot of people are talking about esports and a lot of journalists are writing about esports, a mainstream journalist, so you know that there is something which is really building up. So I think that's one particular thing that the share of mine of esports has really kind of taken off. And I believe that's not theory of fad. It is going to stay here because there are brands, there are OTT platforms, there are linear DB platforms which have now understood that they need a certain amount of their share of dollars to be spread beyond cricket, carrom, cricket football, basketball, all that stuff. And there is a very sizable audience, eyeballs, professional players and mature players, the whole ecosystem, which is available for you to really look at and play and watch and compete, the whole proposition which is important. To me, esports in a very purest form is very simple. People watching, people playing video games, that's esports. Any other formation of that is really a convenience definition which has been created to attract dollars, right? And now if you were to kind of look at that, today you may have 120 million PUBG users, give or take few million here and there, then you have Free Fire and then you have all other games. So you have a sizable number of people who are playing games and then they are at the top will be a 50,000, 100,000 professional players whose skill sets are really good and who will build their fan following like any other sports. And I think that's the whole pyramid from zero to hero is really going to emerge in this country very soon and which is directly proportional to more dollars being spent on building ecosystem, on building price pool, on building competition teams, all that stuff. So I think that's one big thing which is really going to happen. And as I said, it's not going to go away. This is a serious contender for a share or pie of sports business. What, how maybe five, seven, eight years back when Kabaddi happened and soccer happened, you would see that from the urban, even not even just urban, the beauty of the PUBGs of the word is that it is spread across pop straight up. It is not stuck to South Bombay, somebody playing on a two and two and a half lag gaming gear. 5,000, 8,000 rupees, Android phone is good enough for me to become a PUBG player. So I think the reach which mobile based esports will give will be tremendous. And I think this will disrupt the whole pie chart of the revenue of sports in next three to five years. And the habit formation is being accelerated now. You would see a lot of esports guys who have already built fan following that are clocking 30, 40 million views in last 10 days, 15 days. And people are just consuming more and more of them. So I think that's one thing which is really going to here to stick here and not going anywhere else, right? Second thing, I believe the whole education and edutainment and gamification. If you were to create a tri-section of these three things and then create that as a pillar of offering for the consumers, which would be your two to seven year olds or seven to 12 year olds and then 12 to 18 kind of stuff. But this intersection of entertainment, gaming and education is here to stay. And that is really going to create a lot of opportunities whether Byjuce will appear from content to gamification or Nazara will take it from gaming to education. But that intersection is really going to come and stay here and that's not going to be changing at all. We are seeing ourselves a great kind of in our subscription app which is aimed for two to six year olds. We are seeing great traction of that really happening as we speak. Again, I believe that habit is going to be long lasting. You may settle at a higher. You may not settle at the current peak, but the new normal will be much higher than the pre-COVID and the adoption and the propensity to pay which is an important element in gaming because we keep talking about users and dollars, the lag between the two. Here in terms of subscription, you would see that really closing in very fast because a good familiarity, especially in the younger kids we have seen being a parent of two, that the familiar content breeds more and more content consumption more in ones because unlike adult kids, love some watching something which they are familiar with and they have been used to watching. So I think that's the second thing which really is going to be staying here and doing well. Third piece, I believe that if you were to look at social multiplayer, given that we are socially alive as human beings, given that we are a young population, we love and we are very competitive, social multiplayer games would be a new thing which will continue to happen. Now there could be formats. The formats could be I'm playing team versus team, I'm playing one versus one, but ultimately what it is, it is new what does. I believe the gaming games are the new communities. That is what is really going to be the defining moment for people because a game just offers a great context and great experience, great new experience all the time, fresh experience all the time when you come and play and that's why the games are going to become new community because you are not just consuming, you are interacting and it's like sports, you are having a new experience, unpredictability all the time which leads to conversations and that's what I believe Fortnite today would be the biggest game, like Second Life, they are already moving towards the direction. We believe closer to home, you're playing cricket, like a WCC game which has three, three, four million people playing every day for almost 52 minutes and that's the data which you said after social media, so we are seeing in cricket game, people spend every 52 minutes per day and we are not talking about some 300 people, we are talking about three and a half million people every day and that's the kind of time spent which we are seeing in the game and what we are seeing is content to connection will happen in games very quickly because the context is of multiplayer, the context is to make friends, acquaintances and friends which will happen much faster and I think that whole behavior is being accelerated under COVID because of the social distancing, your lockdown at your home, you may have your initial concentric circle of your own physical friends who are used to hang out, then your other acquaintances but very soon you kind of start getting habit of playing the game more and more and making more unknown people, meeting unknown people through a game and then getting to acquaintance and friendship. I think that's the third thing which is really going to be a long lasting impact and games being the new communities is going to be a reality which is really going to happen. I think the fourth thing which I personally, it's not so much of a consumer habit but I believe all of us in gaming are very, should be very sensitive about it and very cognizant about it is responsible gaming. We are not a gaming nation, we always have as our parents have, we as parents have an issue with any kid spending more time on gaming and not studying. It is always that stigma, it is always that myth that hey listen, you're wasting your time. When we used to be kids playing cricket was an stigma, today playing virtual mobile games will be in stigma. As parents see a secure safe future for their kids, they become more comfortable in letting their kids do it. But till that time that apprehension stays, they will not allow to do it. That is one part given that cultural sensitivity is very high. We should be very, very careful about responsible gaming. Second, the whole piece about skill-based gaming where I can make real money by cash in cash out. I think that's another one which is very interesting concept in India which is very unique to us which has really become big. It is really growing very fast. But again, what kind of incentivizing, what kind of enticing, what kind of Lakshman Rekha do we kind of draw? It is very important for the industry and for the people like us who are running it to be very cognizant of it. Because given the underlying cultural sensitivity, it is very easy for knee jerk reactions and policies to emerge which could really throw baby out of barter. And that's why it is very important that a self-regulatory framework, a responsible gaming thought process mindset is very important and not get carried away with the whole euphoria that this is the gold rush and let's all kind of get into and do that. Last thing which I would like to conclude is while gaming is exciting, gaming is good. My advice to a lot of youngsters is that this is like gold rush. There'll be few people who will be able to strike gold but there'll be many other guys who will fall by the bay side. Be careful about it. Think properly, be agile. Don't get carried away by your own romantic ideas. And just look at what is consumer telling you about your game, about your offering. Quickly find the product market fit without you really burning your hands too much into about your own thesis. And it is very easy to get caught in your thesis in industries like gaming because there is no precedence. And you can always say, hey listen, I'm going to make the precedence because I'm so smart and so I'm so smart. That's fine, but please validate it with the consumers quickly and take that with lots of reality and don't wish it away that my consumers don't know and don't smoke what you're cooking there. So I think that's where I would really kind of end. Ritu, I can't hear you. Yeah, yeah, that sure made a lot of sense Manish. So we've got some questions coming as you were talking so I'm gonna probably ask a few people to actually ask you these questions. Can we give the audio to Manish Jain? He has got quite a few questions to ask you. I think you should limit to one or two. Yeah, that's what we'll do. And let others get full chance and if somebody is still not wanting that question you can give my ID, happy to interact later. Sure. Chirag, can we give the audio to Manish? Okay, I have the audio. Can you hear me? Yeah, but Manish, please restrict to one or two very important questions. We cannot, we don't have time for all seven. All right, maybe then rest of the questions I can as he has. Yes, you can, yeah, he can. Please go ahead. Hi Manish, this is Manish Jain, I'm from Delhi. So like it's lovely, like I came to know whatever you have discussed over here. Now what kind of online gaming are legally allowed to be played in India just for the objective of winning money? Like these days I'm seeing so many ads coming up for MPL and people like on TV they are saying they're 150,000 rupees, one lakh rupees. Is that legally allowed over here? I think that question I'll leave it to Pawan who will be a part of panelists and you ask him. He is a thesis in that. Oh, okay. And again, like my next question is related to that only then maybe I can just talk to him or can we like tie up with your company and we can just be a part of that for making it like a game, playing games or from business point of view. Yeah, Manish. I would need to defer it to subsequent, let's do a business development discussion of the call. Sure, thank you Manish Chen. We're now giving the audio to Nile Joshi. Is Nile, yes we can hear you Nile, go ahead. Yeah, hi Manish. Hi Nile. So just this one question, right? I mean, because we have seen the rise of games like Fortnite or PUBG, right? And like you correctly mentioned that during this lockdown period this because of social distancing, multiplayer games has increased a lot, right? But do you see maybe even like in after four or five months if you know like lockdown gets more easy and the people would start working? So I mean, will we see rise of maybe people focusing more on single player games or still I mean, there will be a huge increase in multiplayer games? See Nile, if you look at the gaming, gaming just a natural thing. What do you enjoy more? Do you really enjoy more playing with your friends or do you enjoy playing alone? So when you play any of the physical game, you play soccer or you play carol within premise or you play cricket or you play badminton, you really enjoy playing with your friends. I think that's a very natural thing to do. And if you look at the history of mobile gaming or any kind of video gaming, it has moved from a single player to multiplayer gaming with as the infrastructure has evolved because that's a natural evolution of how human mind really enjoys and gets more decommod. So I don't think that is really that COVID is any reason, COVID has just accelerated it because you are sitting at home and you are playing that in office, you may not be able to consume, but here two, three things are coming to your thing. One, a lot of your friends or a lot of people are online and hence concurrency of users is not an issue. That is basic given for a multiplayer game. Second thing is you really are kind of feeling lonely and missing your friends and you are kind of doing that, right? Third is that our internet infrastructure has really improved over the last three years and which is why you see a lot of single player happening earlier, but as the infrastructure keeps improving, you would see more and more multiplayer game adoption happening and monetization in free to play mobile games, what we call freemium is directly proportional to multiplayer games where people are playing one versus one or three versus three or five versus five or even the contesting which is happening in the real money skill games is directly proportional to concurrency and internet infrastructure. So I think this is not something, as I said, it's an habit which will be formed and it has been accelerated by this behavior and that adoption is great. Somebody was telling me that Ludo has 90 million monthly active users Ludo King. Now, can you imagine at one point of time, a few weeks back it was number one app, not number one gaming app before Zoom took it over. Now, 91 million people playing Ludo, why would they be playing Ludo when they have a physical Ludo in their house and they can play? The very simple thing is that I want to play with more and more people and I want to build my more concentric circles of friends with different variety. There could be some friend group, there could be family group, there could be some unknown group, there could be city groups. So I think that's where it is really happening. Obviously, will Ludo remain at 90 million monthly active users? Absolutely not. But will it come down to a 30, 40? The earlier thing, it may settle at 50, 60 because now people will find that habit. The frequency may not be four times a week or five times a week, it may be twice a week. But that all is going to continue. I think this is a steroid for a multiplayer. Sure, we'll give the next question to Darshid Shah but while he's, Darshid is coming online, I have a question for you Manish. I also came across this data that there has been an average spend of about $65 on bots, mostly by Generation Z. Do you see this becoming a practice and do you see this becoming a great revenue tool for gaming companies? I don't think, I didn't understand fully but if I were to kind of interpret it, you're seeing people playing as bots? No, no, no, not people playing. People using bots to, let's say win the game or using maybe those. So there'll be always hackers, Ludo. And there are always very smart people. And that's where the job of any, especially and these bots will come into more and more picture on, especially when you're looking at skill gains for real money. Right, because a self-learning bot which could really improvise, let's say a game of quiz or a game of, let's say archery or a game of, let's say a knife or anything which requires a deterministic skills that when I attain, I can really win over others, right? Now if you can really kind of create that kind of a program, AI, which is really able to be doing better than others, you will do that. But I'm seeing as a game offerings, I really know that how do I control them? How do I preempt them? And they are not good for the overall ecosystem because that really leads to this presentment among other users. But it's a cat and mouse game and I think it'll continue forever. Sure, but does a gaming company lose money because of it? Gaming company loses money definitely at multiple levels because let's say if I'm a very good bot and you are a newbie, I can clean you up and you will never come back. Does it make sense to have a mouse bot too? No, absolutely no. And I think it is illegal and unethical. Sure, so I think Darshut Shah is there already. Am I audible? Yes, Darshut, hi. Hi, Manish. This is Darshut from Deon Industries. We are next sometime back with Raj Kundal. So just one question which I have, I need to understand your perspective that which form of gaming do you see will gain the maximum attraction? Will it be real money gaming or casual gaming or any sports? See the beauty of India, the beauty of India is we have 500 billion smartphone people and a lot of people have made a mistake of looking India's one homogeneous market. India is not a homogeneous market, will never be a homogeneous market. It will always be heterogeneous sets of homogeneous offerings. So you will have a very strong market which will be doing a multiplayer games on freemium. It will have a very strong market for casual games. It will have very strong market for skill based real games and it will have a very strong market for e-sports. Think of ourselves like this. Even a hundred million people playing mid-core games or hardcore games is bigger than combination of many European countries and that's the size of this market. So it is never going to be that one form of gaming is going to really dominate in this country but there are segments size itself are so big that you could really create scalable large businesses in India from those segments. Which is why for example at Nazara we have diversified offerings because that's my learning from my Unilever days that there will be a wheel and there would be a rim and there would be a surf and there would be a surf axle and axle mat. Sure, we'll take one final question from Sarthak Doshi in interest of time if we could give him the audio please. Am I audible? Yes. Hi, Sarthak. Hi, my single question is on your when you described about e-sports as everyone using the same term to market their games I would just like your thoughts on how would you define e-sports and if there is a categorization that you can think of in the gaming industry what would those gaming categories be in like looking at different business model what would be the categories you would see in the gaming industry? Okay, I limited to one direct question what would you say when you say e-sports and is there any category that you see in the gaming industry? It's very simple for me e-sports is a media business it is like any other sports it is defined by people watching players playing as simple as that and if you really understand the value chain it will be the platforms where the people are coming to watch it will be live streaming and content creators which will be working with the game publishers to ensure that that content reaches to those platforms that's a simple value chain now in that value chain you will have to figure out where you are playing if your answer is on category for example, we have taken a conscious call that we are not a TV channel we are not going to be a Twitch we are not a Prime, we are not Hotstar we are very very content to really be the largest most dominant content company for e-sports in this country we will dominate and we will protect that with our lives we will ensure that the quality of that content is global and we would lead our thinking on mobile based e-sports the best thinking globally because we are sitting in India which leads mobile sports unlike US or Europe which thinks PC based e-sports so to me that's where the e-sports is now whether you are playing PUBG or you are playing Fortnite or you are playing Free Fire or you are playing cricket I am in a conscious call sorry guys so that really doesn't matter and for those are the games and we will work with all game publishers to ensure that we are able to give great viewing experience to people on variety of platforms sure we will have to end with that so many sharing and parting thoughts from you for somebody who is a new enthusiast and wants to do a gaming startup as I said look outside in rather than inside out that's a good one thank you very much Venish this is very insightful indeed and hopefully next time we will meet you actually in a physical place and we could have some animation there as we go thank you very much thank you very much for joining us today thanks bye bye over to you Pritima thank you Venish thank you Ritu moving on to our first panel of the day this panel will be for about 60 minutes our panelist are parts Chadha founder Ivor Varun Mahana founder and CEO Poker Dangal Bhavananda co-founder Winzo Games Rola and Randa CEO All India Gaming Federation and our moderator for this session is Mr. Rajesh Raju Managing Director Kalauri Capital I would now request Mr. Rajesh to start this session over to you sir hello can you can everyone hear me yes then let me expand on this welcome everyone that was quite an interesting keynote from Manish of course he's a veteran of the industry and I'm also good to hear some industry stats from Ritu as well before that so thank you for that I'm not going to go into the industry and the metrics and the numbers I'll try and limit it to some of the questions that I have for the panelists here today we have a very interesting panel and some are veterans like Manish and others are maybe new to this business but I'm sure in the short period of time entrepreneurship makes you I guess equally experienced and we also have Roland who can give us a flavor of the industry and where the industry has been and where it's headed in the future so we have a very interesting panel and just setting the context here we as investors of course we have tracked gaming for a long time and along with online education by the way for the last 10 years I should say at least that I can remember and both those sectors one online education we took early becks at least for the last 8-9 years and gaming we were a little late and both those sectors actually like I think Manish and Ritu also might have mentioned were sleepy sectors they did not live up to the expectation at least to our expectations in terms of growth and monetization for a long time we struggled with education for a long time although we have done fairly well but it's never too late we were fortunate over the last 3-4 years we've been investors into the gaming industry and fortunately we made the right becks and they have done very well for us but still the early years when we invested were tough and the last 2 years we have seen significant acceleration in the market the monetization, the number of players I hear the numbers are close to 300 million gamers now in India expected to go to half a billion soon the industry size is fast approaching a billion dollars and it will be a couple of billion dollars over the next 2-3 years so high expectations for the industry and there are some real solid companies that are built like Dara and we will see at least our expectation is that we will see many, many multi-billion dollar companies in the gaming industry it's been slow for that uptake the past 10 years but the last 2 years have shown as great signs and of course this COVID could become an inflection point that's why we are here today to look into what are some of the behavioral changes what are some of the permanent innovation changes that are happening in the industry we will learn from the great panel that we have today so without further ado I will jump right into Q&A with our panel what I will do is I will ask my first question I want everyone including Manish I think he is still around I hope all of you to take a minute and give the audience a flavor of what the industry is looking at pre-COVID because everyone is looking at the industry today with a fresh set of eyes and they don't know all the turmoil that you went through and what are some of the challenges that you faced educating the masses and bring the masses on to the platform which were very, very difficult so I want you to paint a picture for me and for the audience here on the pre-COVID scenario for the gaming industry some of the trends, some of your business challenges some of the legal regulatory challenges that you faced so we will go we will start with Roland I think he can give us an industry-wide glimpse into what it was pre-COVID Roland could you start with that and then we will move to the others Roland can you hear me Thank you Are you available? Yes you are, please go ahead Thanks I think Manish already covered some of the numbers industry numbers but you rightly summed it up because in the last although the industry is around for about a decade it's only in the last 2-2.5 years that there has been traction that we have been seeing at the AIG what we have done is we have categorized this into 4 buckets so we have the card games Rami and Poker and these are individual business segments in themselves we also have the daily fantasy and now digital sports gaming or digital e-sports so these really make up the online real money scale gaming space that we are centered around of course the online gaming industry itself is much bigger because there are companies that look at advertising as revenue streams and others through in-app purchases etc but we are really concentrated around the real money scale gaming side of the business so pre-COVID as you rightly said over the last 2 years there has been a major traction that we have been seeing and just before that also this part of the business clearly is in the area of about close to 4,500 crore right now and there are some figures that EY just put together for the Ficky Frames report which was released in March and a lot of those data points went from our side at the AIG so in terms of number of gamers you are right in the excess of 300 million right now but really this is the entire gamut of online gaming but suffice to say that in the pre-COVID era there was enough and more traction the number of startups coming into the gaming landscape was growing, number of gamers were growing, the investor community also looking at it very positively and this segment that I just talked about was quite robust to begin with and a lot of attention that it was already drawing from all these stakeholder groups one of the reasons for the increase obviously was the clarity in regulation around some of the games although it continues to be a state subject but that was one of the reasons the other reason obviously being the India becoming digitally rich whether it is in terms of payments or in online transactions and obviously the smartphone penetrations reaching half a billion and all of that put together really in the pre-COVID era made it very a very viable business proposition for all the stakeholders great let's move on to the same question let's go to the path of you yeah, thanks Rajesh so I think we were already there in terms of users had already got acquainted with online gaming so transitioning from feature phones to smartphones and data getting cheaper but since the beginning like starting from snakes and Candy Crush, Palmville and now PUBG so people were already acquainted the lockdown has definitely accelerated the entire user base like attraction going more into gaming more online traffic and people the screen time increasing but definitely Manish mentioned right that eSports as an industry is growing it would actually mirror what eCommerce was in the last 5 years so we were already there but lockdown has helped us a lot and it's actually sensing that people never demanded us but now the demand has increased because people sitting at home and getting access to more mobile smartphones they are playing more and more games great Pawan would you like to share some of your pre-COVID experiences in the industry so I think I would sort of sink in with the thoughts that others have shared we were definitely growing very fast to be very honest we started off this business 2 years back for the first 1 year or so we are spending some time cracking the code because we are a very vernacular rich platform so cracking the code of tier 2 tier 5 audience especially since we are real money so we need to also make sure that people are comfortable doing micro transactions on our platform but last 12 months have been terrific for us we have been growing 50-20% month on month and of course I would say the first time in my life during this COVID fiasco I have been on the right side of luck the business is moving now I mean at some point we have to reach out to Amazon to scale our servers that's the scenario I would say I think probably we are having these webinars now around gaming and everybody is discussing gaming a lot more during corona because tier 1 audience are probably even white collar people even you know corporate hanchos so to say these days I mean spending time or catching up playing pubg's and Ludo's and all kinds of games but if you see tier 2, tier 5 their consumption has always been very huge because their as you know bits are more expensive than whites they don't have shopping malls movie halls where they catch up or they go out on weekends they spend a lot of time on mobile devices they have always been doing that it's only the lockdowns that happen and you know people are not being able to visit shops, malls and so what is there spending in tier 1 a lot more and that's why this topic is even being discussed now but I think from a from numbers point of view from the trends point of view I think the wave has already initiated a couple of years back and smartphones have been sort of you know into the picture and it has a very positive I would say prospect going forward and some of these things will be very very irreversible so might I think I you know some there are a lot of people who feel that you know it's a it's a very very momentous tailwind things will die down very soon but what I feel is there will there will definitely be you know things will die down very soon but fundamentally a lot will change because a lot of people have been exposed to this kind of entertainment right with respect to gaming a lot of people were fed up of you know just watching videos and spending time on social media they got imbibed by gaming and now it's going to be you know life changing experience for them great great Pawan thank you I will ask Varan to paint a picture for us he is part of that age old I guess real money gaming industry which has been around for a long time Rami and Poker were traditionally I guess the original games Varan could you could you tell us pre-COVID what your experiences were what your challenges were thanks Rajesh I mean now so guys so we had a two and a half year old start up and Poker in India is very niche compared to Rami which is an age old game Poker is something which got introduced to India in the last decade or so it's a very nascent industry so the challenge is a little different for Poker when it comes to talking about how do you educate the users how do you tell them what Poker is because compared to Rami or compared to the other games which are being mentioned Poker requires a certain amount of homework certain rules which have to be followed while playing the game so it is not that everyone can just come up pick up the sport and start playing it requires a lot of practice to kind of master and to play it with real money you need to really be good at it in order to excel at it so we have seen that the traction is there definitely for the game of Poker in India the market is opening up with more and more people joining the bandwagon we have seen a lot of people shift from Rami to Poker or take Poker as the first skill based card game which they have learnt so our business in the last two years scale phenomenally we are one of the fastest growing platforms in the country and before the covid crisis we were at an accelerated growth path what the business is all about is customer acquisition, customer retention and customer engagement so I believe the corona epidemic has accelerated the customer acquisition bit for most of the organizations on this platform and it is similar for us our sudden customer acquisition rates have gone up the engagement levels have gone up and definitely as an industry we see a lot more people picking up Poker because of the kind of game it is it is a lot more faster than Rami it is a lot more you can say new age than Rami and the audience is definitely taking up the game of Poker and we believe it will become a game of masses you know in the next five years it is a very exciting time for us and I mean this entire epidemic has just made the customer acquisition and the engagement levels higher for our users great thank you, thank you Warren I am going to skip Manish for this particular question because he has already covered his pre covid and post covid experience prior to this session on his keynote actually let me get back to my second question and again I will start with you Warren while you are on the screen here I would like to know as an outsider I am sure a lot of people are new to gaming who are listening to us today what was one maybe at best two surprising things that you have noticed since the covid crisis hit us obvious things I mean I would know and I am sure other people would know people sitting at home of course they would be playing more and games tend to be addictive so I am sure the usage is higher what are some of the nuances that we don't understand or some of the surprise some things that surprised you even something that you felt hey this is not obvious it was not obvious to us and it was not obvious to you tell us share something what are some of the top panellists to answer the same question what was one thing if you had to pick that even surprised you since the covid crisis well there have been you know getting into a start up you have to kind of be prepared for these surprises and the unknowns but every day there is a new challenge and a new surprise which comes your way I mean the first pointer is to go out in this entire epidemic is let's divide the last one and a half hot months in two zones when it started and when people actually got to understand that this is something which is long term so we saw a sudden boosts in you know our deposits for example because people thought that you know it's a two weeks holiday which they are getting when they are working from home but suddenly we realize that you know this is long term this will continue probably six months four months we don't know what kind of time frames we are looking at over here so we did see that a lot of our users who had initially started depositing very huge volumes they kind of tapered off they kind of you know started to put in the volume which they were doing before the covid scene exploded so we saw little peak then there has been a pretty stable plateaued growth coming in from the last 15-20 days from those set of users that was point number A we noted point number two which we noted was a lot of people coming in from different parts of the country and playing the game of poker so primarily the traffic from tier one and metros is something which we are you know we have the maximum traffic coming from these areas but definitely traffic from smaller cities it is picked up like anything the game of poker is now I can tell you hugely popular in say Bihar in Indore we are seeing a lot of people coming on from these states and picking up the game which is very heartening to see because it tells me that you know the people in different parts of the country will pick up the sport and once they try and experience it definitely they will get better and they will spend more and more time on it in the last 45-odd days which have been heartening and kind of been something which impacts my business on a daily basis Varun thank you good to hear that I'll actually go to Manish I know Manish you guys have a very diversified portfolio at Mazzara I'm sure you have quite a few if not surprises what a few interesting things to share if you could again pick one or two things that this COVID-19 has thrown at you either a challenge or a positive surprise any nuances that some of us would not as layman see from outside anything that you can share see I think two things on a lighter note I think after 2006 when I left Hindustan leave after 14 years my extended family in small town of UP is appreciating what I do so they used to understand my line of work when I used to sell detergent and be in that time when they knew that there is a Hindustan leave after that they thought I'm just wailing away my time thankfully now they know that there is something which he is doing of use to them so I'm very pleased that I don't need to explain to them what do I do to make my living on the other note I think for Nazzara and as you Raju rightly said was we are having a very very difficult choices to make once part of our portfolios are growing very fast other part of our portfolio we have to quickly change our mindset and look at companies which are dependent on live sports on how do we really look at cost optimization how do we look at really thinking it through lying low running our operations but keeping the moral of the people how do we use this time to build capacity and capability and then come out stronger when the COVID is there so you have a very different messaging which I have to do we are having a course of two interactions which are back to back one is very expansive mindset another is very survival mindset so I think that to me is an amazing experience personally to really be on a very different mindset in a matter of seconds great Manish that's good to hear thank you for that let me ask Pawan what are some of his new learnings or experiences and nuances from this COVID crisis so to be very honest I mean just anecdotally sharing something interesting which for one or two days you thought is an aberration but then of course the trend has continued so like very sure of this basically for us for our platform peak time used to be at 10pm and I think that holds good for more of the content related platform this is the lockdown at least our prime time has started it's basically shifted 360 degrees and currently the highest traffic on our app is at 10am in the morning which basically means that people usually get up they have their breakfast and then they just start playing games and I'm sure it's going to be very similar another interesting thing is there is more traffic on weekends so again something I don't know I've sort of cracked this out but are people taking a break from smartphones or weekends I don't know what's exactly happening so this is something which is again very very specific to what we are observing talking about how I think we are also in a spot just like Manish mentioned right of course we are in a stage where we are thinking about how we should really plan out for resources what kind of games should we acquire everything is everything in a way is changing post-COVID right if you see the kind of titles that we thought we would be acquiring maybe 12 months down the line interesting because this year is going to be booming and we will be able to do justice to that of course recent scale also to that level so that is something which is and I think from a business planning point of view from the kind of titles we need to acquire to the kind of marketing spend you need to do another interesting thing for example when we are doing distant marketing you can clearly see that our cost per installs have reduced by and large because our conversions have improved on a regular day if somebody is watching an ad there are the likelihood of that person what that ad really means versus in times of lockdown where there is ample amount of time and people are more than happy to explore what's the real product behind that advertisement is definitely improved so that is again I think something which is in our favor we are right now in a business planning board and sort of figuring out what we need to do our data science team is like on a regular basis trying to come up with next 3 month 6 month projections as to what kind of kind of numbers we can we can pass on those benefits to our partner developers that's essentially where we are great but your shift to 10 am peak time is definitely a little bit of a concern for me I'm sure I guess people were expecting this work from home thing I've been very productive I've been hearing from all our portfolio companies that people are as productive as before but this 10 am shift I'm really concerned I didn't want to bring this up that is the I didn't want to bring this up but that was the first thing that as a co-founder I also wondered what's wrong with people are they starting off their day with playing games but hopefully I think for everybody's respite I want to tell you that majority of my user base is from tier 2 to TFI cities and unfortunately those guys don't have the luxury to work from home those majority of those guys usually have to be physically present in their offices so yeah I think people who are asking their folks to work from home should not be that worried as well and I think just to build on Pawan's point Raju you shouldn't be worried these guys are shopkeepers who can't open their shops and now after doing their morning breakfast puja what not they have nothing left to do for the day to begin and hence make some money no worries Manish that's all they are planning to make money no worries as long as our companies make money and people continue to be at least semi product too I think we are happy but last part to round it off this question anything from your end yeah so we also got a spike in tier 1 users like similar to winzo I would say I mean even the tier 1 audience are used to taking those chai breaks during the offices and now those chai breaks have turned into a quick game on the apps right and also staying physically disconnected like people want to try out and call their colleagues and come for a match let's say a pubg match or a ludo right so tier 1 was a surprise for us I mean we were vernacular in nature so we also kind of acquired tier 2, tier 3 earlier but covid gave us the tier 1 audience as well and also I noticed something that came out to be a surprise was there was a shift in user base I mean there was a transition from casual to more serious gamers in this covid time I mean people were acquainted with the games already and they were skilled at those but now they have they are spending on it they are putting depositing more money and then trying to leverage their skill and on out of it so transition that transition phase from casual to serious has happened during covid actually acted as a catalyst in that and I mean tier 1 definitely is one thing and age is one factor which money also highlighted I mean the average gamer earlier stood between 2025 right so now even on our platform we are seeing 35 36 years of age and coming across from India and helping like connecting with some friends and families and playing multiplayer so multiplayer earlier was a little downside because like we see that we need to have more concurrent users to play multiplayer games right and right during the covid more people having screen time and more people logged in our average time went up spent on the app that's like 15 minutes right now and multiplayer games happening more and more so these are the key points which you are as an as we saw coming as a surprise but somehow we had anticipated being a start up I mean when lockdown happened right in China and then our prime minister calling out for a lockdown in India we also took our measures to scale up so that we were ready we are ready to cater to a broader user base great thank you for that so actually moving on to the to the next question as as as venture investors we are as you can imagine diversified across technology to various sectors and some of the research we have done for the past 5-6 weeks since the covid crisis hit to see what sectors are getting impacted during the crisis and how these sectors are going to be impacted either positively or negatively into the future because we believe the long lockdown that we are part of today is going to permanently change some behaviors I think we have lost you yeah I think we lost our days yeah I thought it was my network but seriously for a second the movement part showed up on the screen I was like thank god it's not me same area sorry so we have a lot of questions that have come away so I'll just start out with reading of the names and if we can give them the audio so first question we have from Rikin can we have the audio of Rikin yes they can go ahead please my question was actually in the last segment picked up so it was the question right now yeah please go ahead yeah my question was too many is that how they are in the stigma of the Indian parents that is that they encourage them to buy the subscription for the age of 2 to 6 years because Nazara has just started into that segment so I would like to know that how they are planning what they are going to make sure that the parents go for the subscription for the young children hi do you have young children yeah I do have two daughters how old are they one is 6 years one is 8 years and one is 2 years and does your wife work right so what do you do to get a sigh of relief we have I know where you are going so we do provide the mobiles and technology that's not the question I don't know whether you remember or not Manish but we have met in your Nazara office I have a similar similar app in the learning zone for the 2 to 6 years page so yeah my point of view is very simple can you take kids away from mobile devices some parents who are able to do it great but most of us have failed in that desire and are having and will be on mobile devices and they will do it now you have two choices you give them a content which is safe and can really have them entertain and sublimely they can learn something or you can kind of give them a free jungle to roam around where you don't know what they encounter and I think that's the as a parent is a choice which you make and when you are making that choice you basically lean towards safe nice entertainment with some subliminal learning which can happen and that's where I think is a very good content play because we have seen ourselves if it is too much of education kids run away they are not dumps they are very smart and the moment they smell that your parents are trying to learn something which is learning they will run away so there is a fine balance and I think that is where Kedopia has struck the good balance with the kids and if kids are really attached to it parents don't mind spending money and the acceleration of subscription happens now acceleration of subscription is also a function of per capita income and you are you have to really have that kind of mind to spend that much on as a discretionary spend and be okay with it it becomes easier in case of education but it is also a question of per capita income and that's why for example Kedopia is really a big hit in the US and in Europe and in India we are still seeing that the LTV cat equations are still not very apt and hence we are not spending too much money on India while we are really accelerating the pedal on the US and Europe in markets Thank you The next question that we have is from Tarun Lala Hi folks, thank you I actually had posted my question in the previous segment so I have two questions with your permission my first question was with the session with Manish where he said we have a larger market size and of course they also diversify from different cities so the question is here if we want to launch something to of course ride the covid wave but also there was a market independent there is a market independent of the covid wave one side he said larger market which of course the willingness to pay maybe a little less is wrong about this if we need to launch during this time do we need to launch premium do we need to diversify revenue streams or launching now means we need to keep the positioning very very crisp for one type of market is it great is it not or is the free market is the free adoption necessary in order for them to convert to the paid guys as well that's the first question and the second question was when Baban and Parth mentioned that you are seeing a broader audience with a higher age is that a good or bad thing from a point of view that do you think these guys are going to disappear once the work starts or was covid the push towards the inertia that these guys needed to get over in order to come and adopt these reforms and do you see them continuing on I think answer is very simple covid no covid anytime if you want to succeed you need to have a very sharp offering and quickly really strive to find that product market fit from monetization and attention so I don't think those basic 101 principles change if you have already found product market fit you can accelerate and I think as Parvan said your cost of acquisition may be lower today and you can take advantage of that or your attention may be higher because people spending more time and having more time and their discretion but if you are still able not able to find your product market fit I think covid or no covid is not going to change you have to really iterate and get towards that so diversification could be at multiple offerings but each offering has to succeed on its own all right thank you Manish we had a question from the previous session from Pavan from Manish Jain so I will just let him ask the question Manish if you are there please ask a question Manish Jain Hi Pavan this is Manish Jain I put up that question to Manish also like but he suggested you will be the best person for that like what kind of these games are legally allowed to be played by players for the purpose of purely objective of winning money and all yes so I mean I would say there is a there is a 3 word answer to it 30 word answer to it and 3000 word answer to it but I will try to really keep it crisp so as per the guidelines or as per the regulatory framework of the country any game of skill wagering over game of skills is allowed so of course now the entire debate happens on what is game of skill and what is not for example some of the things you know as per Supreme Court's guideline in the past you know for example Rami even I think in some court orders fantasy has been considered to be game of skill right some of the things that we ourselves know like team pati like roulette like you know all these dice games like ludo they are clearly game of chance right what's more important is that the dominant effect or the dominant factor of every game should be more of skill than chance so wherever you think that you know if a person will continue to play continue to practice and with the help of the hand eye coordination or reflexes on knowledge or you know more dexterity or motor skills a person will have an edge for somebody else those are considered to be game of skills for example games like karem pool or something like a pubg cricket you know these are considered to be game of skill and waging on them is allowed so yes people can actually play for real money tournaments and they can sort of win money also if they perform well I think I will add to that quickly basically today you can equate a pubg player to any other on the field sport just like cricket or basketball because he actually practices the game even when the tournament or contest are not there and he has to be well equipped with the gameplay and everything so spending time and attaining skill with that game and then the government giving clearance to the skill based games so I think it's very interesting to have these games being played for real money because actually you are putting in your real skills out there and then competing and have an ambition to you know beat your competitor and team up and hand eye coordination and then getting well equipped with the gameplay so it's very justified to have these games being played for the real money aspect and this is a larger question so maybe we should ask Roland also to comment I was going to ask this question on the panel there's a lot of confusion about regulations around these so called skill based games and I know the industry has been working hard to make sure that there is support legally and from the government Roland if you could also expand on that to see what you've been doing and what the industry plans to do into the future to make sure that the gaming doesn't hit roadblocks legally yeah thanks Rajesh so at the AJF we since it's a state subject and there is no particular ministry so as to say no federal guidelines so we follow the self regulation mechanism which has worked well for some of the other industries we've been doing that for the last four years now these are some of the parallel industries that the Supreme Court also has supported self regulation mechanisms are the ASCII advertising standards council of India the Indian Broadcasting Federation which is supported by the MIB Ministry for Information and Broadcasting and similarly we have made representations to the Ministry for Electronics to have a similar positioning of kind of endorsing the self regulation charters that the on India Gaming Federation have and the stakeholders adopted now all of these self regulation guidelines are good governance do's and don'ts for stakeholders whether it is the kind of KYC is being done whether it is the deposits that are being collected or payouts to the winners all of those are put into charters what we call charters that all stakeholders adopt to and then there are also periodic annual audits that are done by one of the big four firms and then they actually get a seal of recognition that they are audited and they comply with these charters and this includes the not only the card gains as well as the fantasy but it also includes the digital eSports as well so all the four categories so now these have worked well our representations have been received very well and there are case laws, prior to that obviously there are case laws from various iCords and also the Supreme Court which categorize each of these as games of skills we have also expert committee panel at the IJF which is made up of some retired Supreme Court judges, some law and order experts, some data scientists and financial experts and all of these have gone through those charters and have even looked at some of the innovations that some of the operators come up with within these four categories and categorize them also as games of skills so as of now I think for the immediate and the near future you are right when you introduce Rajesh that Ilangana is a no-go state as far as any online games for money is concerned but all the operators and our members geo-block that state, other than that pretty much as of now I don't think there are issues, there are some sporadic high court cases which the industry body IJF has taken up and those are subjudices including the one in Ilangana so let's see how it goes but as I think for now and for the future I think gaming is online scale gaming for money is I don't see any such issues going forward That was basically a longish response that I mentioned of. Just one more thing, it will be great if somebody can also share when you are asking the question if you can also share the context in which you are asking the question so that we can answer probably a more pointed and more helpful in a more helpful manner Sure, we can do that. So next question we have from Biba Hi, can you hear me? So I would really appreciate if someone can comment on the micropayments aspect of it and the compatibility with the current payment gateways I would address this question to Pawan Okay, thank you so much I think that should definitely be touched upon in this discussion glad you brought it up So, essentially when we started it off I will tell you very quickly we will try to sort of summarize. When we launched this platform we started off with subscription packages. Subscription packages were more like SKUs of different durations like you pay 49 rupees for one week, you pay 500 rupees for one month and so on and so forth. We identified people were interested the most the top selling pack was always the one day pack which was I think of 20 rupees or something right which was very clear that people want to try it out and then people were repeatedly buying it off again and again which means that if you look at tier 2 TFI audience they are the affordability is you know is I would say is you know for a large chunk of them is not very high right and secondly there is a massive trust deficit there people want to sort of make transactions but they definitely always want to start off with a low amount. Keeping these two things in mind what we did was we completely got away or got rid of our subscription module we added a wallet in our wallet within the app. Now people can simply top up this wallet by you know either Paytm or debit cards and all and then they can keep on spending let's say I add 50 rupees and then I will keep on spending this 50 rupees across games, across formats in the entire Vinzo mobile ecosystem and interestingly the smallest I would say you know entry ticket or the smallest entry ticket that sort of goes by in our platform is 2 rupees and interestingly that is one of the frequent or the most frequent transaction or entry fee that's usually being played by 60 to 65% of our user base. Now what happens as a result of which is while a person is feeling that he is only spending 2 rupees but you know a person doing 20 gameplays in a day and probably let's say you know close to 600 gameplays in a month will eventually end up spending close to 1200 rupees if you take even 10% that you are earning around 150 rupees from a person in a month's time but at his own leisure if I would ask the same person to pay me 150 rupees just the way Hotstar does on Netflix does probably not they will not be interested in buying those packs but because we give them the flexibility to start from as well as 2 rupees to manage their wallet balances that they like I think that works out well for them and it helps us also do if not more around 100 million micro transactions in a month so that's what it is. One more thing I want to also interesting anecdote I want to share is when we are starting off we realize that you know we had Paytm to add wallet add money in our app wallet one of my developers asked me that why do we need to add the option of debit cards here if people are sort of you know having monies in their Paytm they might as be doing it by a debit card itself right so we spoke to a couple of people and those people told us that they actually go to some of these shops they pay them cash like they'll pay the shopkeeper probably 105 rupees and the shopkeeper deposits 100 rupees in their Paytm wallet that is how a large chunk of the audience in tier 2, tier 5 is still thriving I mean I'm not sure what the percentage is now but that time what I'm talking about is something towards end of 2017 or early 2018 when though everybody in tier 1 knew and this is post demonetization right but still a lot of people didn't have the means to add money in their Paytm wallets so that's the state of Indian digital I would say of digital payments sort of ecosystem Varun you would want to add to that maybe definitely so there are 2-3 things I would like to add to what Pawan has already you know said the first thing which is very important to gain the trust of a user and specially when you are using real money gaming is the security of the payment which is coming in and also the security of the payment which is going out so when I say the digital payment mechanism in our industry it has to do both with deposits and withdrawals so what we saw in poker specifically was when we entered there was a little bit of mistrust with respect to the withdrawals from the users and the customers so we ensured we are you know paying out the users instantly in order to gain their trust and that was I think one of the biggest things we got onto the table back in 2018 was when we introduced instant withdrawals so basically a user will get the money back into their bank account in less than 10 seconds once they click on the withdrawal button and that encouraged the users to come and spend more time on our platform to come and spend more money on the platform a typical average transaction on poker platform is roughly between 1000 and 1500 which is very different from what it is for other casual games where the ticket size can be as low as 2 rupees per transaction in our business the typical ticket size is a little higher because that is the nature of our business is slightly different from the casual games but the comfort of withdrawal is basically what helps these users to gain the trust to deposit a certain more amount of volume onto the platforms and I think it is very important and that the trust is maintained by all the platforms and the players the important thing which has happened during this last 2-2.5 years is the ecosystem which has evolved so when we started Paytm you didn't use to support online poker they had a apprehension on giving out their wallets but since the last one year we are now using Paytm and it is contributing a lot from the tier 2 tier 3 cities where people don't have credit cards and they don't want to swipe credit cards on gaming platform but they don't mind spending 100 rupees on their Paytm wallets so I believe the ecosystem the way it has evolved has really helped the deposits of withdrawals and there is a lot of technology now which is being used to verify whether people are legitimately making these transactions or are these fraudulent transactions as well which is also very important to ensure a fair gameplay so I mean there are a lot of different aspects to digital payments in the gaming ecosystem and it is very important for us operators to integrate the best practices to integrate the technology which is available to us to ensure a fair and transparent gameplay as well. So those are important aspects which I wanted to touch upon after Parvind's input which was bang on Hello Yes Hi good afternoon this is Dharni. I represent the ministry of Belgium entity which supports investment and export between India and Belgium so my question is we've been seeing Indian start-ups with the potential to scale up in the near future taking a call and moving to a more matured market to Europe we will be seeing companies for example like some of AI based start-up companies they are postponing their investment plans to 2021 so it's open so we will be seeing Indian start-ups moving abroad anytime soon. Thank you Rajesh would you want to toss that question to anyone you want I think we can if you still have money online I don't think we have I can maybe have I would just want to add a line to it and then maybe Rajesh can sum it up. So see we are speaking to Parvind from Vinzo we are speaking to game developers across the world as long as a two-member team to as big as a very large game studio and of course if you know there are certain good great game developers out there in Belgium we'll be more than happy to onboard their games get into contracts and all of that So Parth you have anything to add to this Yeah I think it's similar in our case as well so it's not only the Indian developers who are building games there are a lot of interesting concepts coming up outside India as well so like the growth outside is immense like we see Fortnite and other games develop in the space outside India so we love to collaborate with people outside India and definitely scaling the audience outside as well would be on our plate sooner like in the coming few months but we'd love to have developers and people stakeholders in gaming industry from outside to collaborate with the war games great So in terms of time check how many more questions we have and we have a lot of questions but as you wish I mean we can take a couple of more maybe before we wrap up if you want Let's take two more questions So the next question we have from Jackie Go ahead Jackie Yeah hi So I wanted to know what do you think is the future in India in the next 5 years would it be the premium game like Clash of Plants would it be real money game like Poker or Rummy or would it be games like PUBG which are multiplayer games I think I can answer to that so like Manish said it cannot be only one specific side of game I mean it has to be the entire because Indians are liking almost everything starting from the casual addictive games to hardcore battles in PUBG and Free Fire and even poker and team played crazy in India So what I see is eSports would go as big as eCommerce and even more than that I am sensing that parents are going to spend on headphones and laptops for gaming for their kids so that they can build out a profession in there so the industry is going to go very big there would be stakeholders like content creators and hardcore gamers and these guys would be managed by managers so not only a single game would take up the bigger piece of cake I mean it would be all different segments like the indigenous games and even outside games coming from outside so it would be the entire plethora of games See Jackie it's Parvan this side from Vinzo just want to add to something the total size of the gaming global gaming industry is $139 billion which is cumulatively greater than the size of the entire movie industry as well as the size of the entire music industry now I'll tell you what your question is similar to what kind of movies would people like 5 years from now whether it's going to be horror, it's going to be comedy or it's going to be action now the answer to that is any great movie that will be well made, that will be catered to the masses that will be relatable to the masses will definitely click whether it's casual, whether it's semi-core whether it's multiplayer, whether it's real money I think to be very honest each and every model has its own niche and that niche in itself is by the way double digit billion dollars that we are talking about it's not as niche as the word niche sounds so we just need to focus on picking the thing that really excites us the most if you are applying to develop your game and then just ace it and I'm very sure that there is going to be more than takers for that kind of a model and as far as monetization goes again it really depends because I know a lot of people who are excellent, who are excellent in monetizing their games but when you talk about real money gaming they don't even understand those concepts they don't understand how the real money economy within a platform would work and on the other side some of the experts on real money side of things probably poker, Rummy operators, if you speak to them and you tell them that hey how would a freemium model or in-app purchase driven model would work they wouldn't have a clue about it so it really depends on the the metal of the team, the vision of the founders and the creators into creating something phenomenal as far as potential, as far as scope is concerned it's humongous across categories we as investors also believe that the industry is going to be large the question has always been when would it become a large industry in India it's never been the question of if and I agree with everybody who has answered that question, I think there are going to be a lot of genres just like Power mentioned in the movie industry and there are going to be a lot of sub segments within gaming industry, the industry is large enough that multiple people or multiple companies can play in each of the sub segments So Saurabh one last question So last question we have from Jaish Jaish please go ahead Am I audible? Yes you are Okay great, so my question is to the panel around the recent platforms that enable hosting these online tournaments tournament style games for games like PUBG and all, for small entry amounts and then the result is that the winner takes all and the platform retains a percent of your all pool Just wanted to understand what kind of future these platforms have and are they even legal and what is their dependency on the game IP owners to facilitate such tournaments Let me ask actually Warren, if you could answer that question Hello I am there I know Poker, similar style tournaments that he was asking about but done in Poker also Drew, both offline online, maybe you can comment on that So the legality is pretty much I mean we've discussed it, Roland has explained it, Pawan has explained it as long as your sport is classified as a game of skill, you can monetize it by wagering of money and you can do a tournament-style revenue model as well, so the legality of the game is pretty much the functionality of the skill levels involved in the game Now what is the IP aspect of the streaming of these tournaments and how do you monetize them, so typically in Poker how it works is that there is a 10% service fee which is charged by the operators against all the kind of guarantees which are promised for the tournaments and the money is distributed pretty much between 20-25% of the audience who plays the tournament so for example if 100 people are playing, around 20 positions would be paid and there would be a 10% service fee which would be divided by the operator in this particular domain, tournaments are important especially for poker, rummy, skill-based card games because they are a huge crowd puller so to acquire the customers, they act as a very good tool for us to kind of say, hey you can put in 1000 rupees and you can try to deploy your money if you come first and they are a very good advertiser of the skill level which is required in the gameplay because you are competing against 100 people on a similar battlefield which is giving you equal opportunities so people who are more skillful who are having a higher level of skill they kind of do better in these tournaments over a period of time so if you look at the kind of number of professional poker players in the country these guys are pretty much there in every big tournament which happens in the country beat offline, online so you would see those 50-100-150 names doing well consistently which kind of re-attributes the fact that it is a game of skill in people with higher level of skill set will do well I would also like to add another small point which will answer the previous question as well around how do you see the game happening in the next 3-5 years so I believe there is going to be a hero culture around all these sports very soon there will have heroes coming up from day-to-day life who will be the brand ambassadors for these games there would soon be a person in India who will probably win 5 crore, 10 crore rupees tournaments and they will be branded as the cult classic heroes of that particular game this is the same phenomena which happened in the US in 2000 when there was a poker player who had won a 1 million dollar from a 1 dollar satellite ticket and that really gave the craze of that sport in the country so this will happen in our country as well there would be someone who will win a million dollar PUBG tournaments or there would be a player who will win a million dollar poker tournament and that will really create the entire awareness that will create the messaging around these sports so we need the heroes to come from day-to-day life janta and it will happen very soon is what my belief is and that is how I see the tournaments happening as a very good customer acquisition tool for our business I think Varun is absolutely right I mean we would be definitely seeing Virat Kohli's and Dravid's in eSports sooner I mean people are that ambitious about eSports game that they want to compete with their teams with one versus one so we will be seeing a lot of heroes coming up soon great good to hear now we are done so if you have any partner so actually I want Roland to kind of conclude this session by maybe sharing with all of us Roland what should the industry look forward to over the next 12 months and 24 months I'm sure you have a better view of the overall industry where it is and where it's heading you could just take a few seconds to summarize for us what everyone listening in today should expect for the industry over the next 12 months. Thank you Rajesh actually didn't get a chance to comment when you were asking about that one thing that surprised us in the period of this lockdown so I was at the ICE conference in London in early February and while I was preparing for that presentation some of which Pawan just mentioned but I was referring to what Ruchir Sharma mentioned to NDTV in mid-Jan and he mentioned that the world has a favorite pastime and that is gaming now and close to 138 billion dollar industry much bigger than films, music put together and the average revenue per user is a global numbers for a game like Fortnite is close to 100 dollars compared to with any social media platform which is earlier two digit dollar number. Now India is moving in that direction with the number of game downloads with the number of game development companies with the number of start-ups in the ecosystem and definitely this was reiterated when Mr Mukesh Ambani was with Satya Nadela and he mentioned it himself also that gaming is going to be bigger than TV, music, movies put together so that is the kind of outlook I would like to leave this session with that in the next three to five years this is going to be the next one of the biggest contributors to the Indian economy. Thank you Roland and our expectations as investors is very similar to your summary there Roland, we believe this is going to be a massive industry and I think like Manish was mentioning the product market fit is important for all the entrepreneurs listening in it's not the worry about the market size anymore I think the market size is getting traction and is accelerating the size is not going to be an issue which was an issue by the way as investors for us it was too small of a market to invest over the last ten years that's not an issue anymore now the question is finding the right entrepreneurs right products that would really grow and catch on with the masses out there is what we are looking for and for entrepreneurs just building a great product making sure the product market fit is there and if you can find that out early on which is not easy by the way early on the better of you are so I would like to thank all the panelists thank you for your time I think that was a very interesting exchange and I hopefully all the people who joined us today got enough information ideas thoughts to either participate in this industry or be supporters of this industry because I truly believe this is the next big thing for India and thank you entrepreneur magazine and you guys to invite all of us here and share our thoughts thank you Rajesh thanks a lot guys in case there were more pending questions feel free to reach out to any of us on LinkedIn independently happy to take more questions and help in any way at all thank you Saurav thank you everybody just one request to the attendees at the end of the session there will be a small survey form if you can fill that it will help us in improving the topics and everything going forward thank you to all our panelists thank you to Rajesh for moderating the session thank you so much thank you all