 gentlemen, we're going straight into our next panel discussion, which will talk about how mobile is revolutionizing gaming in India. Charing this session is Mr. Naval Ahuja, co-founder Exchange for Media. We have with us a stellar panelist here on this platform. I'd like to welcome Mr. Rajan Nawani, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, JetSynthesis. Mr. Siddharth Roy, Chief Operating Officer, Hangama Digital Media. Mr. Varun Mahna, Founder and CEO of Dungal Games, and Mr. Nitin Goel, Country Manager, Indian Subcontinent, Game Loft. So very warm welcome to all of you. And I'd leave this screen to you, Mr. Ahuja, to take the discussion forward. Thank you, Khyati, and a warm welcome to all the panelists. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for taking time out. I know Siddharth has a hard stop at 3.15, so we'll keep the panel crisp and short. Let me get straight into it. Gaming has become a huge area of interest. And to those of you who are listening, let me just share two or three pointers. One of the key reasons gaming has become so big is that globally, gaming earns more money than all the other entertainment media put together. That's how big globally gaming is. And naturally, the inference we draw from there is that India has also headed the same way. So relatively, it's a smaller industry, but guess what? One of the reports that I saw yesterday said by the end of this year, which is this financial year or the coming financial year, FY22, we'll have 500 million gamers in India. That's a huge number. And just like Vinith just said, 80% of people who have mobiles in India are already gaming. So from a pastime activity, which was seen as only kids would do to then graduating to people who had access to only PC and consoles, gaming truly has gone mainline. It's gone mass. And COVID naturally has given it a very big fillip. So we are here to discuss how mobile has really given the gaming world a huge massive win in sales. And on the other side, what are the challenges yet to be overcome? So let me start with Siddharth. It is an obvious one that penetration of mobile has really helped pick up of gaming habit in India. The mobile penetration is huge. People are accessing games on their mobiles. And as we know, now the need for a PC or console has gone away. People have decent quality smartphones which can be used for gaming. Beyond these obvious pointers, what are the two or three other things in which mobile is really helping the gaming ecosystem lift up? Thanks, Naval. Thanks, Exchange for Media for giving us, giving me a chance to be part of the panel. I believe overall, anything to do with gaming and the fact that India is one of the youngest countries in the world, I mean, it is completely correlated in that sense. The fact that India is expected to be over 800 plus smartphone base, that's a very, very large and potent play with regards to connectivity. And then gaming being brought in as a entertainment construct in that sense. Any kind of data, in any way you slice it, you would see that 75% to 80% of consumers who pick up a device and get connected are looking at some form of entertainment. And gaming becomes in that sense a very, very default entry point. And casual gaming in India is a very large play keeping in mind. We have a young country, propensity to pay may be low, but they are willing to consume advertising to be able to consume casual gaming in that sense. So all of that links to what even Vinit spoke about prior to this, which was listening to his data sets. It's all ongoing well, because when you even talk about eSports, it's actually a set of games that drives that entire ecosystem. And consumers are consuming all formats of gaming, be it immersive, be it casual. And that's driving that opportunity. In India, the advantage is the fact that as younger consumers are coming online, there is definitely a format of consumption that is being driven. With people being locked in COVID, there were over 45 to 50 million new consumer gaming consumers that came in in FY21 itself. That was because other formats of entertainment was not necessarily because if you look at film entertainment or you look at music which comes out of our movies, if content is not being released, then what's the kind of content that consumers are consuming? So that's one. The second big play out has been time spent. And that has been increasingly growing, exponentially growing. Any kind of data set that you read, people are talking about roughly about 8 and 1 half hours per week of casual gaming happening on mobile devices. Binge consumers are gaming as much as three hours a day. All of that is reflective of a certain sense in direction that is being created. So in a nutshell, as an opening statement, it's great timing. The fact that there is a community out there that is consuming gaming, does Indian gaming community, both from the developer standpoint and the publisher standpoint, have the ability to go out and put out products which became sustainable business playouts in the future. Yeah, fair point, Siddhartha. I'll come to you in a short while on that. Just to buttress your point, yesterday again, the report I'm talking about in-movie presented a report which said time spent, weekly time spent on gaming is three hours, seven minutes. And that compared to three hours, 42 minutes and television was four hours. So as you imagine, gaming is already up there in terms of time spent with other media. And very soon India is possibly going to be the second highest number of gamers in the world. So that's a huge number. Nitin, let me come to you and ask you, as a gaming company, of course you are, I'm sure you're bullish on India, what's happening, but what are some of the challenges in the market that you see when it comes to scaling up? You know, it's like how the mobile story in India started 20 years back. The initial adoption was very fast, but for the market to kind of get to a stage where monetization is possible really well, it's a long time. So what are the challenges that you foresee coming in the way? Thanks, Nalo, for the invite. Yeah, with respect to just coming straight on to the point, with respect to the challenges that you are actually talking about, with respect to the gaming in the Indian market, there, we have been like present in the market for almost like 15 years. And one of the things that we have identified with the mobile gaming as fact is the element of disruption, which actually it has gone through over the last 15 years. Like then being the part of like the global company and earlier having worked with the AI, what we actually witnessed like massive disruption which happened across in like 2010 when Google and Apple came into the market. But that actually eventually helped the mobile ecosystem evolve to the state where in today like the mobile gaming is the biggest source of revenue generation when you look at the overall gaming space. Or when we look at the Indian market from the mobile gaming perspective, what we have identified as the biggest challenge is the monetization for us. Like so while they have been like a neighbors which are falling in place in terms of like the initial issue that I remember I say in 2010 when we used to have and I used to prepare presentations where we used to talk about like the data connectivity being a big, big issue. We had just like 15 million GPRS connected devices at that point in time to today like we are talking about like 700 million users who are connected. That has actually helped, as in a sense like in terms of growing the usage, there are more players now we're talking about the different set of numbers which come across like about the users like some say 300 million, some say 350 but that's a massive number to talk about. And another aspect that you actually identify is basically the availability of the quality handsets. So which is also a good enabler which has happened which is actually drawing in a lot of people actually towards more hardcore gaming now. And there have been certain positive developments that we have seen across over the last two years. I would say there's a lot of learnings which are coming across through some of the work done by the competitors in the market. We are also in our way trying to absorb those kind of things which the people are trying to do. However, for us like the biggest challenge I would say is the fact we tend to actually compare also with the European markets or the Western markets or the U.S. market. And in terms of like the realization per user is much higher than what you actually derive out in the market. And second that we also identify as one of the big challenges is the retention among the users, right? So that's another big issue considering the fact the game sizes that we have also be a bit heavier in size. I think like two gig in class which we identify as one of the issues when it comes to retention among the gamers on their side and DCA significant chance coming across. So these are the kind of things that we need to address on our side. And I believe the potential is massive. There are new monetization mediums which are evolving in the market. And it's somewhere as an organization as a pair we have to think and adapt ourselves into the new evolution which is happening across in terms of monetization. Like just to give you an example I say you have these cases of real money gaming aspect which is actually doing massive out here in India. I think that could be one of the things to look at. So just to put it in perspective I was looking at our numbers. India R4 is less than a dollar right now per gamer. Globally that average is almost $65. So there is naturally a very big ground to cover and let me bring in Rajan. We've had a chat about what kind of gaming world ecosystem is evolving in India. How do you think that there are some of the ways in which this gap between Indian R4 per gamer versus the global one can be covered over the next few years? Yeah, thanks. Now it's a pleasure to be here with you for this forum. You know I think you raise a point that I think everyone in the gaming industry is trying to find an answer to. And I think the best way to really look at it is how do you really look at the journey or the lifetime value of a gamer around the game? And I think the way we've looked at it particularly is that we went pretty aggressive and invested across the entire ecosystem because being able to catch a casual gamer and work the journey with that casual gamer to being a mid-core gamer and then to become a professional gamer through eSports is one way in which we have looked at the journey of the gamer. So that really takes care of the value you can derive from the gamer as a consumer of your product or any other entertainment product. So that's what I think. The second angle to this is the entire brand sponsors, endorsement, all the other industries that can benefit from this gamer and this user. And I think that one is a big one to get unlocked in India because if we look at it until now, the entire area of advertising as well as sponsorship, et cetera on the gaming side has been subpar compared to anywhere in the world. And even otherwise, it's a very negligible number. I mean, digital itself is a very insignificant number when it comes to the total marketing dollars that are spent but growing rapidly. So I think there, the models that will come in because of this multi-format, multi-platform ways that the same gamer is monetized, can become a big difference that will happen in the future. I think gaming from a media angle is also becoming a very strong aspect today. So advertisers are really looking at that in case audience. Again, what you just said, right? The time spent by a gamer is very clearly indicative of what value advertisers will derive. The key problem has of course been, we've not had like a bark on the digital world earlier when those ratings came up and now there are other challenges and issues around that in a country like India. So how do you really validate the impact that brands are having on through these platforms? Where are the credible publishers? Where are the localized content? So I think it's absolutely a long journey and in the relative scope of the gaming industry as you've actually pointed out, it's about 1%. Even if you just take the traditional gaming industry which is comprised of mobile, PC and console, PC and console, we completely messed up. But I think with 5G and with other technologies that are going to drive this, the key change, novel is the social aspects that gamers have found coming out of the pandemic. I mean, so many gamers have made new friends in the pandemic through gaming community. So I think it's the new social way. So there are many aspects to gaming that are thriving. But we are all at a sub-parts, a lot of catch up to do. And I think how we fuel this as an industry is something that we all probably need to work together. And I think that's something that we are trying to do, work with government, work with other industries, stakeholders, as well as the community that's going to shape this. And I think the monetization, the value creation are all things that we're definitely going to follow. And we're already seeing trends towards that. Yeah, I think perception built up is an important part of what you sell to advertisers, gaming as I mentioned at the start has always been seen as a very casual, non-serious activity in which people don't very seriously engage. But I had two eye-opening statements made yesterday or data points to me, which is that in India, almost 40% of the population that is gaming is women. So that's a very important key number for advertisers to remember. And the other aspect about gaming also is that the advertising that you're serving inside of games a large number of people are choosing to consume that advertising because of the fact that you don't want to pay to skip that advertising. And hence the recall of those ads is very high. So I think these are two important data points that some advertisers might be missing and it might need reinforcement. Let me ask, now jump across to Varun. Varun, you are a co-founder of a gaming company and I'm sure, I mean, Nazara has been a sort of fast-breaking company in the domain and the IPO doing well, really augurs well for the industry. But how do you think the gaming industry can cover this path from being in a nascent stage when it comes to monetization to start delivering value for shareholders? Thanks, Naval. Thanks for the introduction and pleasure to be on the panel. The stage where we are with the Indian gaming industry, you rightly said we're at the nascent stage. The utmost importance right now as a gaming operator is to educate the users, educate the masses about what really is gaming. So there is a perception between gaming and gambling. There is a slight confusion as to what is what. So it's important to clearly differentiate what is gaming and what is gambling. It is important from an operator point of view to keep driving the point that, you know, there is a stark difference between gambling and gaming. And hence we have to get that taboo out in the people's mind that this is something which is wrong, this is something which has bad connotations. Traditionally when we guys were in school, say a couple of decades ago, gaming and, you know, playing video game was often seen as a bad habit to have in a child. But now that is changing. Gamification is actually something which is involving a lot of, you know, positive impact, be it in the corporate world, be it in schools, be it in education. So it has different impacts which are there. When it comes to real money gaming, it becomes slightly more trickier because when money is involved, there are different connotations which will be applied. So from an operator's point of view, it's very important to distinguish between the skill-based gaming and the gambling aspect, which is the illegal part of it. Also something which is very important from an operator's point of view when it comes to real money gaming, I believe, is inculcating responsible gaming within your platforms. So we guys are in a stage where users are, you know, recently being exposed to real money gaming. And you have to be careful with the aspect of responsible gaming. It has to be an utmost priority, apart from technology, product, what promotions offers you're giving. Responsible gaming plays a very important role to educate the users that, you know, you have to be careful also while playing games on certain platforms. And I believe once we start delivering responsible gaming with technology and user education, we will start seeing hordes of people coming on board and playing on different platforms, trying out their skills and engaging with the platforms at a better level. To give you an example, Fantasy Sports. Prime example, six years ago, no one knew about Fantasy Sports in India. It was a new subject. People, you know, had zero idea that you can make money from your knowledge as well. But Dream 11 took the onus of educating the masses. They reached out on mass media to millions of consumers and educated them that, you know, this is a game of skill. You can play and you can win some money out of it. And now it's something which is very common. I mean, even in tier two, tier three, tier four cities, we are seeing massive population playing Fantasy Sports in India. That is something which has to be done for different aspects of real money gaming. And once that happens, coupled with responsible gaming, I'm sure we will see tremendous value for the shareholders who are invested in different gaming companies because the market is right. The Indian market is right now, I believe at the cost of that explosive growth, where in another five to 10 years time, this would be a main sector like your e-commerce or like your ed type or fintech. Gaming is going to be that big, big sector where we are going to see millions of dollars being invested. And we've already seen a couple of unicorns, but hopefully many more are in the pipeline. Yes, just to put that in perspective, given the small size of the industry right now, real money gaming is almost 60% of the industry revenue. It's not bad because the industry size is small, but as you rightly said, RMG as real money gaming is called, likely to face a lot of headwinds, especially regulatory headwinds, unless and unless this perception is corrected. What would you say about that, Nitin? What are the challenges that the real money gaming industry can expect over the next few years? Yeah, I think the most important aspect is, as well mentioned, it's about ensuring that it is taking into consideration that the societal aspect of it is taken care of. And there is a definite gray area which exists and that's something that we identified internally in our system as well, when we were actually talking to our guys in HQ, they associated it to gambling. So how do you actually ensure that you are able to dissociate it from gambling and showcase it as a competitive skill-based gaming, which is actually based on pooling of participation fee by the users rather than actually dependent on the sponsors as it's mostly the case with these ports? Basically, in that case, and that's why I see this actually has been able to grow to the level it has grown over the last two, three years. And so when you come across with respect to the eSports, more about like this sponsor event where you are actually going and getting the brands to invest into those kinds of initiatives, which is like difficult thing to achieve. And that's where we have seen this kind of significant uptake coming across to the real money gaming. Only aspect that we need to take care of is to ensure that how you make sure that it's responsible gaming, how do you ensure that the people don't lose out big and this, so the platforms have to evolve on their side and regulate themselves in order to ensure that these issues are well taken care of. Yes, Siddharth, anything you can add to that? I actually what Rajan was saying was so apt that at the end of the day, I think the overall ecosystem is still continuing to grow. And in terms of revenues, where do the revenues lie? Now let's talk about gaming. The fact that the total advertising block has a sizable amount of demand to supply play out. There is supply that is growing exponentially and there's not enough ad dollars chasing that. So when a brand looks at touching community, it doesn't make a difference that he touched from gaming or from video or any other space. He's looking at the quality of consumer segments that he can drive into. Now when that happens, what is the amount of gaming and sessions that are being done? That is a given, I mean, India is exponentially exploding in terms of consumption. Now is there enough money chasing that effective supply for sustainability of the game that we've been put out? And to me, that's the journey. Today when we talk about it, we get very excited about the fantasy gaming spaces or the real money gaming space because the fantasy gaming space for whatever it's worth, if you were to look at the business models they are today on a growth driven model. Each of them are writing sizable values as negatives into their book because their focus is very different about creating large communities in growth in that sense. And there is money at play because there is the pool and then there is that earn that happens off the pool. In real money gaming, it is the unit economics. Yes, there is a play out that happens where real money game are built across casual, across immersive, across all formats of real money gaming. And there is that great that every form of gaming may turn to be real money, which is not the case. There are very large IPs globally that have been built and people like Rajan and us and Nitin, all of us have in our own way built in app published large games over the years, which have made money in play. It could be in the form of IP based Bollywood titles that have come in of certain size and scale, Krish, MS Dhoni and others. And game law is a classic example where they've got global IPs that they've brought in and from the time that edge was there where browser based gaming was happening through the entire journey, gaming has been there and it's actually had sustainable economics. Currently, I believe the way to look at it is that there is a short-term view and a long-term view. The short-term view is gaming in every form in India today is growing. If fantasy and real money and others are investing in their effective growth and they're driving their business and funneled objectives, the casual gaming, which in my mind is literally the largest community out there. And when you talk about someone and you say 40% women, it is bang-on because globally, women drive casual gaming, it's a known fact. The entire social space of casual gaming that came in through, if you remember the browser play on Facebook, Allah, Rajan, if you remember three, four years, five years back, it was largely driven through women as high as 65, 70% in play. So that to me is where the journey is. So I don't believe casual gaming and Indian publishers and gamers who are developing games do not have an ability to build out gaming which has sustainability. I mean, Rajan and me were on another panel together sometime back and Rajan, if you remember, we talked about Ludo as an example. Ludo is a form of, I mean, Ludo King is a classic case study on how a game is built, which is extremely socially relevant and localized for the Indian market and is brought in as a manifest into casual gaming which can have single gaming all the way into multiplayer and you can build out on how you wanna go and build out the IP in that market here. I think fair points. I've just been sent a message, we have the last two minutes. So what I'll do is I'll go around each of you and ask you one simple question. Next three, five years forecast, the industry is projected to be $2 billion in revenue by the end of the next financial year, which is only 12 months away. Three to five years, what's your forecast of the industry size and what do you think will require for the industry to accelerate itself towards that number? So that since you're already talking, maybe you can start with this. I think it's gonna be very exciting. The way I look at it with 300 million gamers already, I believe we'll be about 500 plus gaming gamers growing at an average CAGR of about 40 to 60 million users being added year on year in that sense. I believe the add dollar play out will come to the party. The question is, will the gaming sessions in the gaming community and segments give them the equitables cost to reach that they're seeking? And I believe we will be able to give because globally gaming as a format delivers for brands. So then again, as you rightly said, Indians are willing to see advertising to get their effective coins and bonuses. I believe gaming is a great way to communicate that entire funnel. In fact, right after this, we have a session from David Daniel, who's part of Daimler globally and Mercedes, as we all know, is one of the brands that really use gaming really well. Rajan, quickly on to you, what's your take on it? No, I completely resonate what Siddharth said. I think the gaming industry today, as I said, it's a sub-billion, $170 billion or $180 billion industry, as you look at it. So the catch up for India is massive. And just data tells you, right? If we have 13% of the world's downloads on mobile, and mobile is the fastest growing platform there, there's no question that India will continue to grow. So I look at the CAGR exactly in the range of 40 to 50% annually. And if you were to compound that over five years, you can imagine where India could be, particularly as a size of industry. More interestingly, there are many global gaming studios that are using India talent. So I think, and I think India becoming a part of the global supply chain in the gaming industries. Another very interesting format in eSports. Already, we are one of our companies that we started five years ago, not even gaming. It's already the third largest eSports company in the world. And I think you have Siddharth speaking later on this, even in terms of value and the way things are happening. So there's no question about it, that over a period of time, if we combine all these different facets and aspects of gaming, India will be center stage. Really, how do we handle our definition of gaming? India is a great country where all models exist. How does the government, the states, we are seeing states, gaming being a state subject. All of these could be not, I wouldn't say impediment, but they could be different people coming in the different views. And all are fair, all are right in their own way. I think for us as an industry, it could be to benchmark against what is the law of the land? How are we able to create within that ecosystem? What is right for India? What is right for the Indian gamers? And that way, capture a share of the global market, but I would really be surprised if maybe not five years, but at least in a period of a decade, we don't get into the double digits of the global gaming world, that would be a huge thing. Thank you. Good number to Amat, Nitin, you are closing thoughts on this. Yeah, so what we believe is potentially the growth is gonna come across where the monetization mediums in IAP had been dragged for a while, but we believe that would be a significant uptake, which would come across over the next few years as the gamers evolve in the Indian market. Besides the view, there are new monetization mediums which are evolving, which are coming across in India and India being a very competitive market. I believe that should also help bring in a significant growth. With respect to the advertising, I believe the value would come across through innovations and the native kind of integrations that we can bring across because the current advertising stack, if you look at the commodity admins, I think there's too many players and too much of inventory which is there, which doesn't really help from the gaming industry perspective. So, but I simply agree with respect to the kind of growth that we project. It's definitely gonna be somewhere in the range of like 30 to 40% CAGR over the next five years running in market. Clear. Varun, you are a founder, you are an entrepreneur and all of this must be music to the ears, but running a company with different kettle of fish, what's your take on this? So, now I agree with Rajarjan and I didn't know the numbers because I'm very bullish about the sector. I feel we might even see a higher growth percentage and we might be crushing the $3 billion mark in less than 12 months actually. From a gaming ecosystem point of view, I would like to point out a couple of things which probably haven't been touched upon so far. So, point number one, we see a lot of gaming companies, a lot of startups around the gaming ecosystem coming in the next five years for sure. I feel this is the decade of for the gaming sector in India. Definitely a lot of publishers, a lot of operators, a lot of people who are into advertisements. We'll see a lot of startups around the gaming ecosystem. Probably employment wise, the sector will drive a lot of employment for our country in the next 10 years in this sector. We will see a lot of professional gamers coming out of our country representing us at a national international level. Ecosystem wise, I feel we are right there now to start exploring. From the legal aspect, there are a certain regulations which need to come in now. I think the government has to take notice of the sector and start regulating it in the near future so that we can actually build a more responsible gaming ecosystem for our gamers and the consumers. I also feel another two, three years down the line, we will see some big mergers, some big acquisitions happening in the sector as well. I do see it happening in the real money gaming sector in the next five years for sure, where we will see clear leaders emerging in the next half a decade. And I'm very bullish about the sector. Definitely there are challenges involved because it's so young, people haven't really seen what challenges lie ahead. So that is the fun part of being an entrepreneur as well. And I personally feel we will be crushing the 30, 40% CAGR growth easily in the next five years. Fantastic on that optimistic note. Thank you to all the panelists for joining us. Sorry. It seems like early days of internet, lots to look forward to, a lot to both expect it from the domain. Thank you to all the panelists for joining us. Thank you Siddharth, Nitin, Varun. Thank you. Back to you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. Bye.