 forward we are going towards the fireside chat where we will talk about Indian gaming companies going global. Chairing this session is Dr. Anurag Bhattra Chairman and Editor-in-Chief Exchange for Media Glue and we have with us Mr. Sai Srinivas, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of MPL. A very welcome gentleman. Hi Cathy, thank you so much. Great to be here. Lovely to have you here. Just give us a moment. I think Dr. Bhattra is also here. Let me welcome somebody who is really in the news for the right reasons. Let me welcome Sai Srinivas who is the CEO and Co-Founder of MPL. I don't have to explain to our viewers what MPL is. Sai, first of all, let me start by asking you how have been your last 12 months personally and professionally. I know the gaming numbers have gone up, the gaming business has done well but tell us overall how it has been the last 12 months. Firstly, thank you so much A.B. and thank you so much E4MT for inviting me. The last 12 months has been quite a roller coaster to be honest. The gaming industry has leapt forward by about a couple of years in probably six months. On a personal point it's not easy to practically stay indoors for so long but hopefully with the vaccine rolling out and more people getting it we can all get back to offices in full strength and pick it up where we left off in 2019 I guess. Okay, let me start by asking you today gaming is becoming mainstream. It was sometimes on the fringes. It was something you did for leisure. Today it's not no longer leisure, it's becoming a mainstream activity. You pursue it like a career. You pursue it as like a serious hobby. You also use a gamification in education. You use a gamification in almost every sphere of life is growing. So tell me where do you think gaming is headed and give us a sense of where it will be in three to five years through some numbers that you can share with our audience. Of course. So firstly maybe the reason why gaming is becoming mainstream is that in all honesty gaming has always been in some way mainstream. It's just that now thanks to the access of internet and thanks to mobile phone penetration it's just becoming more and more accessible. Also the beauty of gaming is that games are probably the only format of content that do not have a language. For example, a game of pool can be played by an American, can be played by a German, can be played by an Indian and they might not know each other's language but they can still play the game. But you know you can't, you honestly can't say the same about any other format of content. Be it a movie, be it a video, be it the audio, be it text. I think it's universal language. That's the reason why it's also so easy for anyone to pick it up. Now that's honestly the reason why I think it will be even faster than some of the other content formats out there. Now to answer the other question that you asked, where is this headed or where are we going? I think what's going to happen in a couple of years from now is that there is going to be a platform or whether that's MPL, whether that's someone else that only time can tell. But there is going to be a platform where massive global tournaments will happen. For example, you take a simple game like chess. In two years from now, and in fact a year and a half from now, it's not far-fetched to think that a player who's playing out in New York in US can compete with a player playing out of Saapolo, compete with player playing out of Delhi in India. In massive online tournaments where there are a million or people playing, imagine this tournament, there are a million people playing, first round 500,000 get eliminated, second round 250,000 get eliminated and then eventually you have quarterfinals, semi-finals and finals. Not only is the scale of the tournament quite immense, but imagine the situation maybe where you and I are playing the quarterfinals of a tournament like that. I'm reasonably certain that a significant bunch of folks from across the world would also want to see the live broadcast of how the game between you and me is going on because we've eliminated a lot of people to get to the final eight. I think that is the future of digital sport or in other words that is the future of esports. It is going to be heavy mobile driven because most people can access computing only through mobile. Of course PC and console led the esport revolution and started with them like many other things in the world, but as and when it gets into developing markets and gets into more people's hands, it's going to be mobile that's going to lead that revolution and that's the only way you're going to get competitive esports into the hands of three to four billion people across the world if not the whole of seven billion. That's how I look at the future and that one million is just a placeholder. These tournaments can be as high as 5 million, 10 million, 12 million. It's just the limitation is just your imagination. Practically every person who understands chess can play a tournament of chess online using their mobile phone, but imagine if a similar tournament were to be held offline. It's just impossible to even accommodate more than 10,000 people offline and that's the beauty of online digital sport and hopefully we realize that future sooner rather than later. Absolutely Sai, the esports India are poised to grow and you clearly said that the beauty is that the access to the games is through mobile and that is bringing more and more players and viewers both into the ambit. Now let me talk of homegrown games. How do you think the homegrown games are doing in India and what do you see the potential for the homegrown games becoming really big? I think two points. Firstly there are a lot of incredible homegrown game developers who are doing pretty well in India. There are also homegrown game developers who are making games for global audiences and who focus on making games for western markets out of India. It's a different ball game that we still not have or still not had a AAA level game or should I say a world class AAA level game come out of India and I think this is just a matter of time. It will happen and the reason why it takes time for that to happen is that a game at the end of the day, the closest analogy that I can think of is a movie. To make a high budget movie the market has to grow. The domestic market has to grow. To make a high budget movie the person who's putting in that money needs to be confident that they will be able to eventually break even on the investment. So as the market grows the appetite of local game developers will also grow and you will see larger than incredibly large AAA level titles come out of India. But one thing is for certain, most of Indian game developers or Indian games will be mobile focused. I'm not saying they won't be console or PC focused but almost nine out of ten developers are going to build games for the mobile phone. Okay, now again, Exchange for Media is a business community for marketing, advertising media. Now, as I said, gamification is becoming part of every market year's plan because if a lot of millennials and a lot of consumers are using games as a way to express themselves or spending so much time on gaming platforms either participating or viewing, then clearly the marketers would want to leverage that. Tell us what are the things that marketers can do to leverage gaming? Sure, I think the first thing that marketers can do to leverage gaming is to actively participate in sponsoring or participating in large-scale e-sports tournaments. So for example, just take the example which we took, right? If you're running a tournament for a million people and hopefully another million or two are going to watch that tournament, that is at least two to three million eyeballs glued to that tournament, right? And in a way that's really, really targeted communication because that audience which is playing the tournament as well as viewing the tournament, for those folks, there's no better way to reach out than by sponsoring that tournament. And the cost of sponsoring these tournaments is significantly lower because it doesn't involve a lot of physical infrastructure. If you are sponsoring a physical tournament, then it always involves a lot of infrastructure and obviously that it costs a little higher. And it also becomes an easy way for marketers to actually target specific audiences. For example, different games have different types of audiences, right? Like depending on the kind of audience you want to go after, you can pick and choose and sponsor the tournament which is being held in that kind of a game, right? If you're looking at a more male-dominated audience, then you may want to go for a more male-dominated game which has a more male-dominated user base. You're going for a female-dominated game. There are games which are extremely female, skewed towards a female audience. So that's the advantage of sponsoring these four tournaments. And I think a lot of the marketers should definitely start spending time and, in fact, more importantly, spending some amount of money understanding the space because eventually the marketers who do understand the space are going to get a significant head start over the other folks who will not spend time understanding it, but then would want to understand it once it becomes fully, you know what I mean? Yeah. So Sai, again, let's talk of one of the things that we talk of is you talked of gaming does not having a language barrier. It does not have a geographical barrier. Now, the growth of internet in India happened on the back of Indian language content growing. Yeah. Now, do you think that gaming in Indian language is the next big frontier because clearly that may bring in a set of audiences that have never been introduced to gaming? Of course. I think more than gaming in Indian language frontier, I think like our honorable Prime Minister said, games build on Indian stories. I mean, if you look at Japan, there's so many games that they've launched built on their stories, stories that have originated from their land. In India, in fact, we are a land we've got so many stories, right? And every game one way or the other is telling a small story. It's a very simple story. In some cases, it's a very simple story. In some cases, it's a very in-depth story. I think more than language, I think games that are built on stories which are very, very familiar to Indian audiences will tend to do well, right? And I think more Indians come on line. There will be studios that will focus on building some of these games. Fantastic. Now, again, gaming and if I may say, esports in India is also creating new set of jobs while machine learning, artificial intelligence are taking away some of the jobs, but they're also creating a set of new jobs. Similarly, gaming is creating a set of new jobs. Give us a sense of the kind of jobs that are being created and what is the future for people who are looking at careers in gaming? Sure. See, I think this is one such industry, especially competitive esports. India and Indian platforms will be eventually net exporters, right? You will see a lot of Indian companies actually exporting the platforms to other parts of the world. What this does is that it directly creates, it directly builds a class of workforce, which is focused on IP creation. India historically has been extremely good in services, but the advantage of building this ecosystem is that it focuses a lot on IP creation. And the advantage of IP is that IP can, IP is like digital property, right? It can be monetized again and again and again and again across the world. And that creates a lot of value back for the Indian ecosystem, right? And in terms of kind of jobs it's going to create, it's going to create a lot of jobs, apart from the core aspects, which everyone knows about like engineering, product management, etc. It's going to add a lot of value to the creative ecosystem, right? Today, if there's a storyteller, most storytellers in India are either working in the film industry or related industries, right? Storytelling is one of the most critical aspects of game development, right? In fact, copywriting is a critical aspect of game development. In fact, most of the creative folks who are working in, say, film industry or the OTT industry, a lot of them will find a lot of relevant jobs in the gaming industry as well. So that entire pie is going to expand and expand quite significantly. Designers, creative writers, artists, animators, that entire space and for all practical purposes, India has always been good at this by the way. A lot of the work that happens on a lot of these top-class Hollywood movies, a lot of that work actually happens in India. There are a lot of artists in India who are actually contributing to that. So it's only going to increase the pie for all of those people. I mean, the sector itself, I think, will easily create about 50 to 60,000 jobs in the course of the next two to a half years, easy. And most of these jobs are going to be built around IP development. And the fact and the advantage with IP development is that it's not like a service where once used, the value of 50 roads, right? IPs value only keeps, it only keeps getting better and better. So that's the advantage of building jobs in the sector. Now, clearly as the e-sports audiences, players in the domain grows globally, what do you think is the role that Indian e-sports companies will play on a global level? I think the number one thing that Indian e-sports companies should, the role that we should play on a global level is that we should fundamentally define what e-sports means for our country, what I mean by that is, I fully acknowledge and understand that the western world has run e-sports on PCs and consoles and so on and so forth. But let's be honest, in our country, the number of people who have consoles or PCs is very few. And denying the opportunity for the rest of the 2-300 million people to participate in a competitive tournament just because they don't have a PC or a console, I think is ridiculous. I think the first thing that we should do is we as a country should enable the participation of the larger audience who even have a mobile phone, they should be able to participate in a competitive e-sport. And if you look at the global e-sport audience, by the next 2-3 years, easily about 30 to 35 percent of that audience is going to come from India just because of the sheer size of our country and the sheer size of consumption in our country. Now, 30 to 35 percent of consumption of any industry is coming from one geography. And I think the onus is on that geography to increase participation and at the same time build out clear regulations and create regulations which make it inclusive for users and players to participate. Fantastic. Now, clearly, Sai, when you see an Indian gaming company doing an IPO, it augurs well for the sector. That means the sector is something that has tremendous promise. So tell us, when you look at your contemporaries, you look at other players, what are the kind of thoughts that come to your mind? And tell us, how does Nazara's IPO augur well for your sector? And do we see companies like yours aiming at listing at some stage? Firstly, let me tell you that we are all standing on the shoulders of giants. It's folks like them who've put in the hard work and done a lot of incredible work because of which our lives are significantly easier. Back in 2001, 2002, I mean, I could only imagine how hard it must have been for the entrepreneurs then to even talk about gaming and explain to investors what gaming is. It is so much more easier today thanks to the work that these folks have done. So first and foremost, it is the success that some of us enjoy and some of the next set of entrepreneurs are enjoying is a lot of that credit actually goes to some of these folks. In fact, some of the folks from Nazara and some of the other folks also who work really, really hard to bring that recognition to that industry. Now, as far as our listing is concerned, I think maybe at the end of the day, every company eventually at some point wants to be listed. That's the eventual dream that any entrepreneur would have. Now, we are a two and a half year old company. I think it's a little far-fetched for us to talk about listing at such a young age. I think we still have a long way to go. We still have a lot to learn from the likes of Nazara and from the likes of many other peers or sorry, contemporaries, if I may add, who listed. But hopefully someday, we would also love to be on a similar brand and list them here. Fantastic. Now, let's talk of the trends that are shaping these. If you had to make two or three predictions for the future of gaming, what would those be? Two or three predictions for the future of gaming. I think gaming in India is going to make more money than Bollywood does or all the film industry does. I think that I am certain of. In any country where gaming has become mainstream, it eventually makes more money than all the other entertainment sectors combined. It's true about US, it's true about China, it's true about many other developed economies and India is heading in that direction. The second prediction that doesn't mean that those industries won't grow. Those industries will also grow. It's just that gaming has this nature of the market size of gaming usually grows much more faster than some of the other ones. I think the second prediction that I'll say is that esports is going to be a part of Asian games. It's already a part of Asian games. Esports is also eventually going to be a part of Olympics. I think India and Indians will probably be on, if not the first, at least in the first three or four countries who will win a lot of medals in the Olympics. As long as esports across the globe recognizes that access to the sport is the most important thing. That doesn't mean that you create non-inclusive parameters such as only a person with a PC or a console can participate in it. If we provide the access to our countrymen and if 300 million people are competing in a tournament maybe, I am reasonably certain the person is going to come out on top. It's more or less going to be in the top two or three in the world. Our number one job is to provide access and the number one job is to ensure that these esports which are getting recognized by these global sporting events, they also ensure that they are allowing people with the access to the right kind of devices to increase the reach for the sport. Okay. That's very hardening and I think for a long time we've done well in sports but we fell short of winning medals except in shooting or in boxing or in athletes. I think the addition of esports to the Olympics and the Asian Games will really help in boosting the confidence of the Indian sporting and esporting community and really it all goes well that they're being included and Indians will do well. I want to ask you what are the plans of MPL over the next 12 to 18 months and what are your priorities? I think the first priority is to most clearly and certainly host large-scale tournaments in India. For example, last year in October, November, December we hosted this tournament called College Premier League where in 150 colleges participated in a national level tournament across the country and it was the first attempt. It was in fact the beta. This year we are aiming to host the same event with about a thousand colleges participating. I think first and foremost our goal is to host large-scale digital tournaments where people can participate from any part of the country in India and capitalize on India and ensure that Indian developers earn a significant amount of money from our platform. Secondly, our second priority is to take our platform to as many countries in the world as possible. We're already there in Indonesia and we're seeing really good traction there. Our goal is to hopefully take our platform to more Western economies and India and eventually take Kanjima product out of this part of the world to say more developed regions. I think that's something very few people have done. It's a very hard task and I hope we will be able to do a reasonable job of it. Sai, when you're building this incredible company and you're on this journey, who are people who are your role models and you look up to? I think my role models have always been sportsmen, to be honest. I think there are other entrepreneurs as well across India and across the world who are incredibly good role models but for me it's always been sportsmen who are my role models. For example Virat is in fact my role model. I've always been a huge fan of his and when we actually didn't sign him up it was a bit of an unbelievable moment for me and the reason why I say Virat is a role model for me is because the way the man changed himself and the way he kind of changed himself to achieve the to become the sportsman he has become and the way he shaped an entire country to believe that we can be world leaders and we can also be the kind of athletes that back in the day we used to see from Australia, we used to see from South Africa, back in the day we used to say why can't an Indian field as well as say in South Africa team or an Australian team and I think I think what Virat did was that he made everybody believe that not only could you do that but in fact you could go a level further and be better than anybody else in every way possible and for me I think that is one I've never seen an athlete inspire someone and inspire a country as much as he has. Apart from that of course the other sportsmen like Ronaldo and Nadal who are incredibly incredibly amazing as well and yeah in terms of business folks I think Indian entrepreneurs I mean a lot of Indian entrepreneurs I mean the founders of Flipkart, the founders of Infosys, like I said Virat standing on shoulders of giants they've all done a lot of good work and it's because of their good work that you know we have we have such a vibrant depro system so yeah these are some of the folks I really really look up for. Thank you so much Sai we exchange for media wish you luck in your endeavor to grow the e-spots domain in India and to build MPF to the next level so I'm sure with somebody like you leading it the goals and objectives you've set for yourself and for MPL will be achieved all the best to you congratulations on growing MPL and e-spots in India and I look forward to the next few months and years with anticipation because I know that you'll be able to do a great job at being a poster boy for this industry thank you so much all the best back to you back to you