 a lot of information that's coming your way, but make sure that you attend the next session as we are going to talk about eSports being the number two Indian sport of the next decade. Is that true? We will find out by our speaker, Vinit Karnik, Business Head Entertainment Sports and Life Events at Group M. Very warm welcome to you, Mr. Karnik. Thanks, Khyati. Thanks, exchange for media. Nauvallahuja, in particular, to have put this fantastic forum together. And what a way to start a fabulous journey in the entire available gaming ecosystem that we have. So great, I mean, absolutely grateful to be here. Thanks a lot for the invite. Let me try and share my screen. Can you see my screen? Yes, we can. Great, Khyati. So thanks again, once again. So I think the topic is pretty straightforward and a bit provocative. And I actually wanted to be provocative today because we have been talking about the eSports, the gaming landscape for a while in India. But now it's the time for us to really scale this up and take it to the next level is the feeling and the sincere point that I wanted to make through this forum. And that's the reason why I thought of a very, very provocative topic today, saying that can eSports be the number two sports in India? And I have lots of data through the next 10 minutes to support the provocation actually and see directionally which way do we go in terms of data versus reality. So let's take a deep dive into some of the key aspects. So in 2019, Mr. Mukesh Ambani said that gaming will be bigger than music movies. I mean, imagine Mr. Ambani making a statement like that is absolutely fabulous, isn't it? I mean, that's a great segue into what we want to eventually achieve in this business. Looking at some of the hard-coded data, we have seen a 14X kind of an exponential growth in the Indian online gamers since 2010. Yeah, so a 14X kind of a growth from 2010 onwards. India is basically all more India is ruled by the mobile gaming gamers. I mean, the numbers on the screen are absolutely sensational to talk the least. So we have 250 million mobile gamers in India looking at 22 hours of time spent weekly viewing eSports online. 123% growth in prize money in Indian eSports from 2016 to 2018. $35.8 million raised by the eSports startups in the last five years. Three average stream number of mobile games on most Indians' mobile phones. I mean, that's incredible, isn't it? With 80% India playing a mobile game on a daily basis. We have already seen Nazara's IPO doing extremely well this week itself. That itself is a great segue to the topic that we have today. Now, let's look at what COVID-19 has done in terms of exploration for the growth of the gaming industry to us. 11% increase in eSports users per week. 21% increase in time spent by each user on eSports. 61% increase in eSports live stream viewership in week one of lockdown. 45% of Indian gamers started playing mobile games during lockdown. 50% spike in daily active users on platforms like GameG during lockdown. I mean, isn't that an incredible segue? Why do we not believe that with looking at these numbers that we can't be a very, very competent competitor ourselves with a lot of live action that's happening in the sporting ecosystem around the world and in India? So therefore, if you look at it, the announcement of the Asian Games 22, recognizing eSports as a metal sport itself is a fabulous news for all of us. I think we should take that advantage of the momentum around it at an Asian game level and see how we can create magic around making it as successful as we all want it to be. So a couple of booster shots in addition to the Asian Games part in terms of the way we are seeing, me personally, and we at Gupemah are seeing in terms of how can all these things help grow the entire eSports market is by legitimacy. I mean, the entire Asian Games initiative and whatever we are talking in terms of federations, in terms of conferences like these, it basically brings legitimacy to the entire ecosystem. It brings acceptability as a metal sport. It builds careers. That's a very, very important point because raising the price money pool, growing the competitiveness of the entire business, it actually is going to be very, very important. We all know that 50% of India is below the age of 25. I mean, if you look at it, India is a young country with an average age of about 26.8 years and we all know that youth today is driving the eSports soft culture and I think we should spend significant time in making sure that this momentum is maintained for some time till it becomes a very, very established kind of a sector. Internet penetration in India we know arguably, I mean, we have the cheapest wireless internet in the world. The kind of increasing accessibility is driving the growth in eSports participation and consumption, I mean, that's a no brainer, right? Imagine the, look at the smartphone penetration. I mean, smartphone market in India is buzzing. I mean, whether it was COVID or lockdown, people were wanting to use various devices by those devices. So that's one sector which is buzzing with some really, very competitive smartphones access for Indians. Gaming and eSports start-ups. I mean, I just spoke about Lazara's IPO, right? I mean, the rising number of Indians start-ups in the gaming and eSports ecosystem is only growing and in time to come, I think it's going to explode if I have to see some of the data points that are available in the public domain. So these are some of the booster shots we believe are going to be catapulting the entire industry over time and a lot of effort from all of us from a marketing standpoint, from a publishing standpoint, we'll have to come together to make sure this becomes, that this dream becomes a reality at some stage, yeah? So let's look at eSports and while we're looking, while we're talking about consumer participation and while we're talking about all the numbers in terms of how consumers are embracing data, embracing mobile phones, embracing gaming, can we look at eSports as a media product? Okay, that's another provocation that I wanted to bring to all your notice. Can eSports become a media product and create a platform for itself to look at multiple layers of engagement within the consumer ecosystem, within the industry ecosystem, within the framework that we all operate in, yeah? So therefore, one of the examples I thought of taking is and possibly look at a comparison of eSports is with live action, okay? So can eSports as a media product, it mimics the traditional sport, right? In five ways that I would talk about, okay? Today we have seen significant amount of numbers for live eSports viewing, yeah? eSports is unique, yeah? So you look at any live sport in the real world, okay? It's unique to its fans, it's unique to its consumers. It's watched live in the stadium, it's watched live on television sets or on any streaming platforms. I think it's common, it's mimicking the traditional sports model. It's very seasonal, okay? Most of the sports around the world are seasonal from a timeline perspective, right? There's a fixed timeline, a calendar that operates. So most of the tournaments worldwide and maybe in India also it would take shape have got a seasonality, have some kind of a calendar that has to do it. The narrative itself is very, very similar, okay? So we have all seen the rags to riches story in the entire traditional sports ecosystem. We have seen a massive amount of grassroots talent coming right from the bottom of the pyramid from the rural areas to possibly become the poster boys of that country or around the world, okay? We see a similar sentiment echoing the entire esports and the gaming ecosystem, okay? The narrative is very similar to the rags and riches story tomorrow. I mean, nobody knew some of the top talent from India and around the world some years back, but today because of the entire ecosystem and the streaming platform that are showing the esports tournaments live, these guys have become stars, superstars, yeah? More importantly, we see top quality sport in the traditional ecosystem, okay? We see the best talent in esports as well, competing actually with their peers either on console, either on PCs or on mobile phones, right? So I think these five points are actually mimicking the traditional sport model, live, unique, seasonal, narrative and quality in terms of competitiveness. It's we are actually headed in the right direction towards making it one of the biggest consumable sporting properties worldwide. Just to give you some perspective in terms of the numbers from a YouTube point of view from March 2020 to January 2021, okay? Look at a comparison between sports and gaming, okay? The traditional sports and the gaming ecosystem. Monthly, average monthly views in the period from March 2020 to January 2021. 742 million for traditional sports against 3,338 million for gaming. Now, I understand one of the points that people may have in their mind that sports is normally watched live, right? But that's the case with esports as well. But today, even if you look at this chart as a comparison of content which is driving user interest, okay? Or a consumer interest. It's a great starting point to look at it for the increasing amount of interest the community is showing towards watching videos watching various different products on gaming on YouTube. Look at the average monthly subscribers, okay? Or to some of the top channels while sports is at 2.8 million, gaming is at 20.5 million, almost 7.3x of the life sports economy. Look at the average monthly downloads, okay? 8.5 K to 15.6 K. And that's the reason why I thought of making this more provocative in terms of can esports be the number sports for India in time to come. We spoke about the talent who's young. The whole philosophy is around catch them young and watch them grow. It's a very, very age-old theory. And I think it's very, very relevant to the esports ecosystem as well. So let's look at some of the advertisers worldwide who have caught the entire frenzy on esports quite early. We have seen significant amount of investors from Dell, Coca-Cola, MTV, Acer, Louis Vuitton, Airtel, Red Bull, Intel, worldwide. We have seen similar sentiments on some of these advertisers on the chart in India as well. They have taken positions in India already, okay? So the whole philosophy, the whole theory that I want to bring to the table is you need to write the esports bright wagon very, very early for you to reap benefits. Today is the time for you to evaluate various different opportunities and how can one relate to this target audience of the guys who are playing the esport and embracing this medium going forward and look at building your brand affinity with them all time. So if you look at what's on offer, the key stakeholders in this ecosystem being the streaming platforms, the game publishers, teams which are created through various different individual talent pool, talent themselves as one of those influencers or endorsers the way you want to look at it. And of course the esport tournaments. Or if you look at this five buckets, they're actually addressing multiple problems from advertising from a marketing perspective, okay? You can look at these five buckets from an endorsement standpoint. You can look at these buckets from a sponsorship standpoint, from programmatic advertising standpoint, from an exclusive content. So this is what it delivers to the marketing community, to the advertising community, to the media community, okay? Now look at it from a point of view of dramatic advertising which is a pipe through the digital ecosystem, yeah? Collaborative content is something which drives a lot of eyeballs and we have seen the numbers on the previous slide in terms of the kind of downloads and the kind of time spent people are doing on YouTube. A serious amount of money is also been channelized through the in-game advertising ecosystem, or streaming integration, experiential marketing. Now these are all important facets of our everyday life in the media, marketing and advertising industry. Can we look at gaming with the same lens the way we have looked at sports in the last two decades? Is the provocation that I wanted to possibly set on this platform, okay? Therefore, I remind one of the phrases that the future is already here. It's just not very evenly distributed at this point in time. And this beautiful quote comes from William Gibson who I have tremendous admiration for. Now I mean, look at it, the future is all set, the data is all there. We are all seeing the momentum, we are all seeing the kind of conversations on various different platforms in the right direction. Can we now embrace this as a business opportunity? Can we now embrace this as an industry in India and just take off from here and look at scaling the entire product offering in the gaming and eSports ecosystem? So on that provocative note, I wanted to thank you all for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts on this platform. And thanks a lot, thank you very much. Thank you so much, Mr. Karnik. It was a wonderful session. We'd love to hear more from you. And I want to ask all our audiences, what is your take on this? Will eSports become the number two sports in India? We know through statistics that India has taken 13% stake in the overall global eSports category. We are expected to reach $2.8 billion by 2022, and we have the youngest crowd in our country. So there is all the elements that require this industry to boom is already here with us in our country. So let us know what you think about it. We'd love to know and join our online conversation using the hashtag e4mgameon. We'd love to hear your thoughts as well. Thank you so much, Mr. Karnik once again.