 It is my honor to now invite for our keynote presentation. I'd now like to call upon Mr. Dharan Chandrath, the director of Southeast Asia at NEPO Partners to give us an understanding of the global gamer. So thank you so much, Mr. Dharan. Thank you for joining us and thank you for waiting by, I know we are over scheduled by 10 minutes. We hope to catch up with you on your session. Thank you and over to you, please. Thank you, Babana. Thank you. I will share my screen real quick. I hope everyone can look at it right now. Yes, we can, please. All right. Okay, thank you so much. So first, thank you for E4M for having me today. As mentioned, my name is Dharan Chandrath and I'm the director for Southeast Asia Research at NEPO Partners. We are a market research and consulting firm covering video games, e-sports and streaming in Asia and the Middle East. Since 2002, we have been exclusively researching and analyzing the digital games market in Asia. And this year marks NICO's 20th anniversary and our experience in conducting custom and syndicated research on gaming, both in terms of consumers and the markets are our greatest strength with all that being said. Today, I would like to share with all of you NICO's data on the global gamer with a focus on Asia. So a big number to begin this presentation. So yeah, in 2021, we estimated that the games revenue for PC and mobile in Asia reached 81 billion US dollars with around 35 billion dollars came from Asia 10, which is our term for India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Chinese Taipei. And the rest are around 46 billion US dollars are from China. The number of gamers in Asia is also astounding with the total number of PC and mobile gamers in Asia reaching 1.4 billion people. And around half are from Asia 10 and then around 700 million or the rest are from China. We expect that the number of gamers will also grow at a five-year compound rate at 8.1% to reach around 949 million in Asia 10 alone. So that's around like 400 to 500 million in India alone and then 400 million in the rest of Asia. And then around 700 to 800 million in China. So game industry in Asia, both in terms of revenue and in terms of the players are amazing and it's very big. And one of the main reasons is that because Asia dominates the world's game market, the Asia video game market compresses 55.1% of the total global games revenue. We estimated that there are around 140 billion US dollars worth of a video game market and 81.5 billion of it came from Asia as mentioned before. And Asia has more public game companies than any other regions on earth with five out of the top 10 biggest game companies in 2021 by market value are from Asia with companies such as Tencent, Sony, NetEase, Garina and Nintendo. And if you look at the top 50 biggest game companies in the world, Asia is home to 26 out of the top 50 game companies by market value. And one of the main drivers of growth and components of market revenue is female gamers. According to Nikos research, we found that female gamers make up around 35% of the total gamers in Asia. And the number is always growing. Last year alone, female gamers grow at around 7.6% while the total growth of gamers, both male and female are 5%. So female gamers are growing faster than the gamers in general. And then female gamers spending are also always increasing with around 10 billion US dollars spent by mobile gamers in Asia 10 who are female and then 13 billion US dollars by female gamers in China who play in mobile. And in general, Asia is a mobile-first region. Mobile games have more revenue than PC games in Asia and console is very niche. It is big in several countries such as Japan or Korea, but then in other countries it's not as big. And then we can move on to Nikos Asia 10 markets. As I've mentioned the Asia 10 markets you can see on the top right corner of the screen. These are the markets that we cover. And in these 10 games market, Japan and Korea are slated to remain the largest markets in Asia 10 accounting for 80% of total PC and mobile game revenue. So out of all of this amazing revenue, 80% are from two countries alone only from Japan and Korea. While the rest of the Asia 10 markets they are very high in terms of players but not really in terms of revenue because all of them are still growing. India especially and the Southeast Asian countries are the largest markets by gamers accounting for 44% of players for India and then 40% of Southeast Asia respectively in Asia excluding China. Other fast growing markets by revenue that I can mention are in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam with the fastest growing markets by players include the Philippines and Vietnam as well. But the fastest growing in Asia is India with 29% growth rate for the number of players and then more than that for the number of revenue. And it should be noted that more than 90% of gamers in Asia 10 are playing on mobile. And in 2025, we estimated that almost 97% of them will all be playing on mobile with India leading the way. This slide will show you some of the summary of our reports such as the combined PC and mobile games revenue which reach 35 billion in Asia 10. The total number that I already mentioned of mobile gamers and PC gamers that will be estimated to be around 714 million people in 2021. And then mobile gamers in India are more engaged in any other markets in Asia 10 laying 14 hours of mobile games each week on average 40 hour survey. And mobile gamers in Asia are also more likely to pay for in-app purchases when their friends are playing and paying as well. So communities are very important when talking about gaming in Asia. Discounts and special offers are also interesting because they're all offering key driver of in-app purchases spent. And a quarter of mobile gamers in Asia 10 are also willing to watch ads if it can help them discover new fun games or if they get rewards and bonuses from watching those ads. These are some examples of our research in general when we were talking about in-app purchases for gaming in Asia. Skins and cosmetics lead the way with 12.3% of mobile gamers in Asia pay for skins and cosmetics. So all across the markets that we cover skins and cosmetics are the most popular followed by equipment. And then loot boxes or battle passes. Those are the main three in-app purchases that gamers prefer when playing mobile games. And in terms of ads, most players that we asked, they said that they will only watch the ads if it helps them discovering more fun games. Although in China, the number is different because most of them will close the ads as soon as possible because probably because there are just too many ads in the market. Some people also said that they would watch ads as I mentioned that if they get rewards or bonuses by watching the ads, the players in India especially said that they really want to watch ads if it can help them discovering more fun games at around 30% one of the highest in the region. And if we zoom in into India's video games market itself, India is the fastest growing market in Asia 10 by both revenue and players. And it is set to break the record of $1 billion of revenue within our forecast period. So in the next four to five years, we expect that Indian game market will reach more than $1 billion US dollars. However, India has the lowest ARPU or the average revenue per user in Asia 10. And the market requires a unique approach for monetization. As I've mentioned, ads and in-app purchases are different in India compared to the rest of Asia. And we also expect the growth to be driven by an increase in smartphone users, primarily as infrastructure investment increase in India. We also expected the rollout of 5G technology across the region including in India will increase the focus on gaming and eSports across the country. We also see that in terms of players, India is the second highest in the world with the first being China, obviously. And then the rest of Asia only cover like around 25 or to 24% of the total gamers in Asia. So if you look into like the graph on the bottom left, you can see that 50% of gamers in Asia are from China. Around 24% are from India and the rest are from the rest of Asia. So India is a giant in terms of gamers in Asia. And we can't talk about the world game market without talking about China because it is the giant that we know is always growing. China's mobile games market in 2021 reached 32 billion US dollars with around 700 million mobile gamers. And it's PC games revenue is also high at 13.6 billion US dollars with 300 million gamers. It should be noted that there are a lot of cross play and then a lot of intersections between the gamers. So a lot of mobile gamers are also PC gamers and vice versa. Although not all mobile gamers are PC gamers. And console is also interesting because China banned console for decades. They just opened it in the past few years. So when we talk about console in China we will always be talking about both the legal console hardware and then the gray market or consoles that are sold from Hong Kong or Macau. And then the number is also astounding at around two billion US dollars with around 15 million gamers playing console games. However, this is very small compared to mobile or PC. And one of the main drivers of gaming in Asia is eSports. As you all know, eSports that are popular in Asia have taken the global lead with the dominance of Asian eSports is becoming apparent on global scale. Last year, the most watched tournaments globally for titles of eSports are mostly from Asian popular titles mostly mobile titles such as Free Fire, PUBG or Battlegrounds Mobile India and then Mobile Legends as well. And then we have titles just like Dota 2 and League of Legends, all of which are also popular in Asia. And Mobile Legends, Free Fire and PUBG Mobile now draw a larger audience than traditionally popular Western PC titles like Counter-Strike or Dota 2. As you can see in this chart most of the most watched eSports tournaments last year were Asian-based tournaments or Asian-based titles such as Free Fire, PUBG Mobile or Mobile Legends. And Asia is also home to the largest audience of eSports players and fans in the world with around 658.5 million eSports gamers. eSports viewership boom during COVID-19 lockdowns and eSports titles saw a surge of new players. So COVID-19 lockdowns brought a high growth to the eSports market. And while tournament ecosystem struggled in the move to online play in the past two years in some markets the value of eSports content was at all time high by year and last year because of steady increase of eSports audience and streaming. Now we are seeing an increase in new events as tournaments return. And we think that the next few years we will see the market reconsolidate and then tournaments will be more and more fascinating to watch as tournaments return offline. And these are like some numbers about eSports in Asia. We estimated the global eSports revenue reached $1 billion last year and then more than half of it or 543 million US dollars of it is based from eSports revenue in Asia. And it is around 5% increase from 2019. eSports plays an important role at internet cafes as well. So in Asia, especially in East and Southeast Asia internet cafes are very important for eSports because players watch eSports tournaments or playing at local amateur tournaments as the main reason for fisting iCafes especially in like China, Korea and Indonesia. It's not as big in India but it is something that is growing in East and Southeast Asia. And also 9.2% of mobile gamers in Asia compete in amateur or professional eSports tournaments according to our survey with iCafes again being the most popular locations for amateur eSports tournaments to take place. We have seen the number of eSports viewership increased by 21% since 2019 with due to the pandemic. With in 2019 we estimated there are around 510 million eSports viewers but then in 2020 it increased into 618 million and then now we expected it is increasing even more in 2021 to around 650 million eSports viewers and eSports gamers as well. When we say eSports game players it doesn't mean that those who play in tournaments it means that those who play eSports games. So maybe people will play Free Fire or Battlegrounds Mobile India or Valorant or Dota 2 or League of Legends but they are not taking place in the tournaments they just play eSports games. And also we see an increase of around 7.3% since 2019 mostly because of the lockdowns. And then the revenue generated by the eSports industry that we cover in the co-partners includes sponsorships, licensing, franchising, ticketing, merchandising and some other revenues but does not include the game revenue because that is something different that we cover for the game industry revenue not the eSports revenue. Asia also sets the pace for international competitions. Asia is the hub for world's top eSports events driven by the size of Asian eSports audience the maturity of eSports infrastructure and by national, regional and local incentives for eSports tournament organizers. We have seen that the catered eSports venues and event infrastructure being built in Asia that support large scale eSports competitions and simplify production logistics. Governments across the region including in India also compete for eSports tourism. Cities and countries compete to host international eSports events by offering incentives and subsidies. This ecosystem is also drawing more international tournaments to Asia each year with several interesting tournaments to note including the international Dota 2 championship at the Mobile Legends World Tournament and then the League of Legends World Championship all of which are happening in Asia. In Southeast Asia, we also have the Southeast Asia games or also known as C Games in 2019. It became the first and the largest internationally sanctioned sporting event to include eSports as a medal event. C Games is officially held under the Olympic Committee of Asia and it's also returning this year as well in Vietnam. Some titles that are played in C Games include Mobile Legends, Dota 2, Tekken 7, Starcraft, Arena of Valor and Hearthstone. The international Dota 2 tournament was held in Shanghai and it corresponded with Shanghai's efforts to establish itself as an international hub for eSports and competitions through a lot of infrastructures and incentive support by the Chinese government. Another tournament that is interesting is the League of Legends World Championship in which Asian teams have been successful in the last four years and it became one of the strong driver of eSports growth across Asia. In Seoul in 2018 in South Korea, the League of Legends World Finals set a global audience record with almost 100 million people turning in over the course of the event as well as 30,000 people in the stadium. eSports is also a complex system. The ecosystem flowchart, as you can see here, include many, many moving points, more streaming platforms are included as well, not just the games itself and the game publishers. We have seen eSports tournaments organizers cooperating with sponsors, cooperating with franchises, with a League profit sharing with the eSports teams, also with ticketing and media licensing and merchandising. So a lot of stuff flows in eSports. An increasing competition between platforms are also interesting to note because in Asia, although we have YouTube and Twitch and Facebook gaming as in other parts of the world, but Asia also has a dynamic market for live streaming platforms. So in India, you have local, which is also behind me. And then we have Africa TV in Korea, for example, we have Niko Niko, which is not related to Niko Partners, but it is a live streaming service in Japan. And then increasing competition between platforms for key markets are interesting to note. In Asia, we have seen deeper platform segmentation as each of these platforms seek to establish its niche. And it also generates competition for eSports media licenses and broadcast exclusivity becoming one of the major revenue streams for eSports. As you can see, China has their own platforms, such as Toyo, Huya, and Billy Billy. Southeast Asia has Garuna Live, Buya, Nimo TV, and Cube TV, and Vigo Live. Korea has Africa TV, Neighbor TV, Kakao TV, and V Live. Japan has Open Rec, Niko Niko, and Mildom. And in India, we have a local and Rio to name a few in the eSports streaming industry. And then what about future trends? I talk about eSports and gaming in general, but Asia-made games are also spreading out of Asia and into the Western markets. In the US alone, Asian games cut out 52% of the market. So this is something that if you're a developer or a publisher, the US is a big market for Asian-made games. Although for now, most of them are from China, Japan, and Korea, but then other parts of Asia are also taking part in this race. With strategy games, RPG games, and shooter games being the main popular genres for Asian games in the US, in the United States. According to this data from Sensor Tower, we have seen that the Asian-made games in the US worth around $1 billion. And then Asian game revenue keep on increasing from just $500 million in 2020 first quarter to around $1 billion in the last quarter. So almost double the size in just two years because of the pandemic. Some interesting titles that should be noted including Ivo Nido King's Return, it is a Chinese game, but it even made its promotion of advertisement in Super Bowl 2017. And they have studios across Asia as well. So this is something that should be noted that Asian-made games are also popular in the US. That means developers in Asia, they have the chance to go toe-in-toe with the Western publishers. Another interesting development that we have seen in Asia is also the cloud gaming with around 1.5 billion gamers in general in Asia. It is a high number of people that can be tapped into cloud gaming, especially as most of them play on mobile and with 5G rollout ongoing, we forecast that most of these 5G users can also be tapped into cloud gaming users. Asia is of course a mobile first market and this is where most gamers will experience cloud gaming for the first time. With cloud gaming mobile only gamers will be able to play high-end console and PC games for the first time. Existing console and PC games will also be able to extend their existing player reach into mobile. However, much of the interest around cloud gaming in Asia is being driven by telecoms. And there are some issues with the infrastructures that we have in Asia. Some countries such as China, Japan and Korea, they have their own cloud gaming services that built on top of their existing platform strategies and it will work even better in those three countries while some other countries, they still have less developed infrastructure for cloud gaming. So it will be a different experience across Asia. So for example, in this slide, you can see the viability of cloud gaming in Asia. We found that Korea, Japan and China of obviously are the more developed countries with cloud gaming technology in terms of overall viability because of their infrastructure and network, content capability and then value and cost. Countries with darker shades here, they have lesser viability in these different categories. And for example, India, it is very good for value and cost but for infrastructure and content generation, it's still quite low. However, it doesn't mean that there are nothing, there are no hope for cloud gaming. It is something that's still ongoing. And we think that as long as 5G plans and cloud gaming services will be priced at relatively affordable ways when compared to other markets, cloud gaming can also grow in these countries. And next, what will we have? Metaverse blockchain, all of these jargons. We don't know because this is something that's still ongoing but we can say some of our thoughts. Metaverse itself became a hot word in 2021 due to numbers, tech and gaming companies embracing the concept. We in the co-partners believe that live surface video games have been building towards the Metaverse concept for decades. I mean, I've been playing MMORPGs in 2001 with Metaverse style experience and immersion better than a lot of today's Metaverse even. But then with the advent of Metaverse in the world, we see that game development, media platforms and other companies will have an advantage when entering the space. We expect a game focused on Metaverse will reap the initial benefits of the strength while tech first companies will struggle to overvalue to their users compared to game-based companies. However, we don't expect to see a true Metaverse experience soon, maybe like in a decade based on the currently accepted definitions. About blockchain and cryptocurrencies, we are still investigating it. Blockchain-based games they made headlines last year to their success such as XC Infinity across Southeast Asia and venture capitals, they have invested billions in blockchain-based games and NFT games. However, the first year we have seen the rise of play-to-earn model as well. And we expect to see new innovative game projects to increase the adoption of blockchain games. But this is still a very tight rope to walk. There will be still a lot of regulatory hurdles and evolution of the terms that we don't expect this to be becoming mainstream anytime soon. Challenges may also occur, especially because of the instability of the technology and the instability of the regulations. And out of the 14 markets that we cover, Japan, South Korea and China will be the leaders for these new trends. However, we also note that Southeast Asian and South Asian companies and publishers, they will have the upper hand in terms of users because of the high number of gamers living in these countries. All right, and that is everything from me. Thank you so much for attending this session. My name is Darang and you can see that you can contact me at darangethnicopartners.com. You can visit our website at nicopartners.com. We have some free stuff as well, such as the Nikon News Free Weekly Market Intelligence. We have blog posts and articles, as well as data at both free and paid reports. Okay, and thank you for tuning and I'll give it back to E4M. Thank you.