India's online gaming industry gains with increased user spending

livemint.com:

NEW DELHI : After years of stagnation, e-sports and video game firms in India have begun generating in-game and advertisement revenues, thanks to India-specific in-game items, a stronger competitive gaming scene, and widespread use of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) as a convenient last-mile payment method. An industry report by Google and venture capital firm Lumikai, released on 2 November, pegged the annual average revenue per user (ARPU) for India’s gaming industry to reach ₹1,600 by FY23-end, rising tenfold in the past four financial years.

While some stakeholders in leading e-sports firms consider it to be at the upper limit of gamer monetization in India, the projected figure may well be heading in the right direction. Krafton, the Korea-based publisher of popular e-sports title Battlegrounds Mobile India (formerly PUBG Mobile), is seeing an uptick in monetization of in-app offerings.

Sean Hyunil Sohn, chief executive of Krafton India attributes it to aligning the pricing of in-game offerings with Indian consumer preferences, and India-specific in-game items. “Monetization is definitely more difficult in India than in other parts of the world.

Overall revenue that gaming companies earn from India remains lower than other markets as of now, but India’s massive number of users gives plenty of opportunities for it to change. To do this, we are looking at offering India-specific pricing and other similar monetization strategies, to normalize paying for in-game items," Sohn said in an interview.

While Sohn did not divulge its India revenue, industry estimates peg BGMI revenues at $10 billion in India in FY23 from $7 billion in FY22, given its increasing popularity in terms of its active user base. “These are