Business Today has a good article on India's gaming software sector and its players.
Arun Natarajan is the Editor of TSJ Media, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of TSJ Media's Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.
Mobile telephony! That's what's driving mass gaming in India. Telecom operators say subscribers are downloading 500,000 games every month from their GPRs or WAP portals (Reliance through its R-World); this is likely to cross 1.5 million by the end of the year. "Mobile phones are making gaming a mass market phenomenon," says Pravin Pinto, GM (Marketing) at LG's CDMA Handset Division. Nasscom estimates that the Indian gaming industry will tot up revenues of $500 million (Rs 2,200 crore at current exchange rates) by 2010. In much the same vein, research agency In-Stat/MDR says the Indian mobile gaming market alone will touch $336 million (Rs 1,478.4 crore) by 2009...
...Says K. Rajesh Rao, CEO, Dhruva Interactive, who worked with Microsoft Gaming Studio for an Xbox game, Forza Motorsport: "Global biggies now seek us out and want to do business with us. It's a nice position to be in." Rao, a computer science engineer from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology, started his company with a bank loan, and remained cash-strapped till 2001 when Atari (a global gaming company) founder Eric Moffet came in as an angel investor and ploughed in $500,000 (Rs 2.35 crore at the exchange rate prevailing then). Dhruva is cash-positive now, and is looking for venture capital to scale up operations.
Arun Natarajan is the Editor of TSJ Media, which tracks venture capital activity in India and Indian-founded companies worldwide. View sample issues of TSJ Media's Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.