Gaming: India is All Set! Date:   Thursday , December 04, 2008 Traditionally, In India our modes of entertainment has been watching movies, TV and music, and India didn’t have a culture of gaming. However the situation is changing fast. The new generation is very comfortable with interactive digital content we have a local games market that is beginning to happen - with more than 50 percent of our population below the age of 25, its a huge target market and hence I believe when gaming market in India truly evolves and actually establishes it is going to be one of the top five in the world. Being early players in the segment, with about 12 years in the business I see within next two years Gaming sector will create huge opportunity for game developers. Today, we, as an industry, have all the platforms—the mobile, the console, the PC, online gaming—all of them happening at the same time. This is pretty unique as in most other markets, platforms established one after the other. The high-decibel push by all the various players is creating a huge amount of awareness, spurring market growth. Alongside, there is a fledgling business for outsourcing with India providing services to the global market. The gaming business is where Hollywood was maybe 30 years ago when it was breaking down the ‘all under one roof studio’ model and on its way to becoming more distributive. This is creating a huge opportunity for players here. The games services business is growing exponentially, as the games industry adapts to a more distributed model of development, and this has created a big opportunity for game services providers. As per the latest NASSCOM study, by the end of 2008, the gaming industry in India is expected to value at $212 million expected to reach $1060 million by 2012 at a CAGR of 50 percent. When we started our business in 1997, we were clearly ahead of our time. We had to create the ecosystem. However, today much of the work done by the companies like us has been like preparation for the future. An entrepreneur can leverage this to achieve his dreams. Yet, he has to face several challenges because gaming is not just about coding. It needs creativity, multiple and diverse talent pool. Putting up of a concrete team to build a solid product line is always going to be a challenge. Also, getting capital is even harder for such ventures. Still, increasing PC and the Internet penetration, exponential increase in the consumption of digital content will bring a paradigm shift in the Indian gaming Industry. The author is CEO, Dhruva Interactive. Dhruva is Bangalore, India based Games Company and is India’s oldest games company with 12 years in the business. The company’s business has two divisions, namely, product-based business and gaming-services business. Under the former, the company develops games for various platforms such as consoles, mobile phones and computers, whereas the latter refers to content creation, level design, programming services among others.