The document is a marketing guide for game publishers targeting the Indian market, highlighting essential statistics like India's growth in mobile gaming and ad spending predictions. It discusses successful monetization strategies that include adapting to local infrastructure, focusing on cultural localization, and employing smaller in-app purchases. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of offline promotion channels and suggests ad monetization methods suitable for Indian gamers.

1. A Game Publisher’s
Marketing Guide To The
Indian Market

2. What’s covered in this deck
Essential
statistics in
the mobile
ecosystem
Successful
monetisation
strategies
Mobile internet
ad spending in
India
Mobile gaming
trends in India

3. A few favoring stats
App store growth both on Android & iOS has largely been driven by mobile games.
App Store Google Play

4. A few favoring stats
A recent report by Tune mentioned that 84% of smartphone users in India play at
least one game regularly.

5. A few favoring stats
The App Annie NASSCOM report
mentioned that India joined the top 5
countries in 2016 for game
downloads with over 1.6 billion of
game downloads happening in 2016
that will jump to 5.3 billion by 2020.

6. A few favoring stats
Revenue from games is
expected to grow at a
CAGR of 87 percent to
reach as high as $1.1 billion
by 2020

7. Mobile internet
ad spending in
India

8. • Mobile Internet Ad Spending in India
• Global mobile ad spending
stood at approximately 108.9
billion U.S. dollars in 2016.
• Indian mobile internet ad
spending stood at
approximately 347 Million
U.S. dollars in 2016 and is
predicted to reach 1 Billion
U.S. dollars by 2018.
(Source: eMarketer)

9. Mobile gaming
trends in India

10. Mobile gaming trends in India
The most preferred genres
• Role playing games (Chhota
Bheem, Bhajrangi Bhaijaan,
Hero etc)
• Casual games
• Casino (Teen Patti)
• Arcade games

11. Mobile gaming trends in India
Foreign vs Local publishers: While the local publishers are preferred for
their local genre preferences (Role play and Casino), there is a wide scope
for both local and foreign publishers when it comes to the other genres.
Low Propensity to Pay: Indians like other country gamers aren’t familiar
with the ‘pay to win’ options thus justifying one of the lowest ARPU ($0.78)
among BRIC countries.

12. Mobile gaming trends in India
Poor Infrastructure
The Indian market is still dominated by
devices with RAM of about 1GB and a
memory space of about 8GBs.
This coupled with poor connectivity
results in low successful download rates
and quick and high uninstall rates.

13. Successful
Monetisation
Strategies

14. Successful monetisation strategies
Adaptation to the existing infrastructure:
Be considerate about the game size (preferably around 10 -15 MB) to make it
suitable for mass adoption.
This can be achieved by unbundling the game and keeping only the core
game features in the basic version.

15. Successful monetisation strategies
Localization
Add a pinch of cultural look
and feel elements UI
around major festivals
(Diwali, Christams, Holi
etc.)
Other implications can be
around local happenings,
current affairs etc.

16. Successful monetisation strategies
Sachetization
• Game developers need to re-think their IAPs. $0.99 cents which translates
to roughly INR 65 will not work in India. You need to look at smaller
denomination IAPs of INR 5–10 to drive huge uptick of virtual good sales.
• Google’s tie-up with telecom for carrier billing (though only post pay
currently) is a step in the right direction.
• While credit/debit card penetration is still very low in India, wallets adoption
is growing leaps and bounds due to the recent de-monetization drive by
the government.
• App store billing with any of the large existing wallets can be an inflection
point for IAPs in India.

17. Successful monetisation strategies
Offline and Online
Game developers would have to use offline channels (For example, college
festivals, gaming events & communities, pubs & inter-cafe championships) to
promote their games.
A good mix of both online and offline promotion is necessary for customer
acquisition and retention.

18. Successful monetisation strategies
Ad monetization
• Because Indians don’t pay for
games they have a relatively
high tolerance for ads in
them.
• Instead of adding interruptive
billboards, banners and
interstitials, an interesting
option would be to look at
native & rewarded ads for
your game.
Native ad
Rewarded
video

19. GAME ON, PUBLISHER!
For monetization guidance, write to us at nikita@greedygame.com