IndiaIN
India came to video games sideways: through 8-bit cartridge clones in the 1990s, then PCs and a boom in cybercafés, and then, almost all at once, through the phone. Smartphones made it one of the world's largest gaming audiences, and its favourite game, PUBG Mobile, was blocked by the government in 2020 along with more than a hundred other apps. The publisher came back the next year with an Indian edition, Battlegrounds Mobile India, which was blocked in its turn and let back on trial in 2023. Beside it grew a larger business in fantasy cricket and rummy played for cash, until a 2025 law banned every online game played for money. What is left is mostly mobile and still vast, 555 million players by one count. Indian studios, long known for building other companies' games, have begun telling their own stories, drawn from the country's myths and history.
Market sizeGames and esports revenue · 2025
₹63B
- In-app purchases 36
- Advertising 15
- Esports 12
Players
Not recorded
Rough scale only. Every market counts players differently, and MENA and IN have no figure.
Photograph Raji: Kaliyuga, Nodding Heads Games
Shape
Who plays and who makes the games. The two annuals count different things, so each figure names its publisher.
- 555Mgamers, by Lumikai's count
- 45%of players are women, in Lumikai's survey
- 97%play on a phone, in the same survey
- 1,900+game development companies, by EY's count
- 66,000people working in them, by the lower count
Lumikai counts 555 million gamers in India in 2025, 9 percent fewer than in 2024, and puts the fall down to the ban on money games.
Lumikai, State of Interactive Media Report 2025, fifth edition, 23 March 2026, venture fund annual
In Lumikai's survey of smartphone users, 45 percent of players are women, 44 percent are aged 18 to 30, and 97 percent play on a phone.
Free Fire and Battlegrounds Mobile India earned the most of any games in India in 2025, ahead of Coin Master, Candy Crush Saga and eFootball.
Lumikai, State of Interactive Media Report 2025, fifth edition, 23 March 2026, venture fund annual
India had over 1,900 game development companies in 2024, employing around 66,000 people by one count and over 130,000 by another.
Games made in India earned over 1.5 billion dollars abroad in 2025-26, by the developers' association's own count, which EY did not verify.
Nazara, JetSynthesys and nCore publish games in India, Gametion, SuperGaming and Gameberry Labs make their own, and Electronic Arts, Krafton, Rockstar, Ubisoft and Riot Games all work there.
Research note
The two annuals count players in opposite directions, FICCI-EY at 515 to 525 million and rising, Lumikai at 555 million and falling, and neither says who it counted.
Research note
Device shares overlap and do not sum, and Lumikai's 97 percent on a phone comes from a panel of smartphone users, not all players.
Where players talk
Games talk in India runs through YouTube and private chat apps, so little of it can be measured from outside.
Streaming
YouTube Live dominates Indian streaming
- YouTube
YouTube is where Indian live streams are watched. Streams Charts says India's livestreaming remains dominated by YouTube Live, and all ten of the country's most-watched streamers in April 2026 streamed there, but only one, LoLzZz Gaming, streams games; the rest are devotional, cooking and cricket channels.
Streaming
LoLzZz Gaming, India's most-watched games streamer
Nearly 30 million hours watched in 2025 for LoLzZz Gaming, who streams Battlegrounds Mobile India, tenth among YouTube gaming streamers worldwide.
Private
WhatsApp chats are private
The government put its users at 53 crore in 2021, ahead of every other platform it counted, and none of its chats can be read from outside.
Members only
~495K
members of the official Battlegrounds Mobile India server
Anyone can see the count on its invite page, read on 30 September 2026, but only members can read what they say.
Research note
Do not assert an Indian games venue hierarchy beyond Streams Charts' YouTube datum. The government's 2021 platform figures count all use, not games, and Niko Partners' India Gamer Behavior and Market Insights Report of October 2025 ranks kinds of channel, social media 58.7 percent, short video apps 46.6 percent, influencers and streamers 45.3 percent, not named venues.
Where the data lives
The seven places to open first. The full list of 39 is at the bottom of the page.
FICCI-EY media and entertainment report
Online and video games, money gaming and esports sized in rupees, with Sensor Tower genre tables. Out each March under a new title.
Lumikai State of Interactive Media Report
Video games and real-money gaming sized apart in dollars, with gamer and payer counts and the top-grossing titles.
Time Use Survey (MoSPI)
How people aged 6 and over spend their day. Play is one code, with none for video games.
Nazara Technologies investor relations
Quarterly results and filings from the listed games company.
App Store top-grossing games feed, India (Apple)
Apple's ranking of the top-grossing games in the Indian App Store, as ranks, not revenue.
Google Play top charts, India (Google)
Top free, grossing and paid games on Android in India, as ranks only, with no archive.
The State of Video Gaming (Ball, Epyllion)
Cross-market sizing, participation and platform charts that no single free source provides. It assembles many vendors, so cite the underlying source where the deck names one.
Research note
There is no games rating database to search in India. The Bureau of Indian Standards' IS 19690:2026, notified on 10 March 2026, sets age ratings from U/A 0+ to A that publishers assess themselves, and it is voluntary, with no order making it compulsory. No public register of ratings under it was found.
Outlook Respawn, Abhimannu Das, 20 April 2026, games news site
People
Journalists and analysts who report on the Indian games business.
Communities
Indian forums, subreddits and Discord servers. Read them for the temperature of the conversation, never its size.
r/IndianGaming
Texture on pricing outrage, import/tax pain, PC-build culture and platform sentiment. Skews PC/console and metro, so it under-represents the mobile mainstream. Hinglish is common. The main pan-India gaming community online.
Open reddit.com/r/IndianGaming39 curated sources for India
Research it yourself
These rows
6 of 6 sources
| Name | What it lets you find out | Type | Cost | Markets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sensor Tower | The reference standard for mobile downloads and revenue estimates, with annual Mobile Gaming reports, genre taxonomies and ad intelligence. The paid usage product also estimates each app's audience by age bracket and gender per country, modelled from its own panel of mobile users, so check the panel's age floor before using it for children. Time-spent figures roll up from top-20 subgenre lists (~62 to 74% coverage), so treat them as lower-bound floors. Excludes China Android. The ESA's data partner for US spending figures. Enterprise pricing is custom. Some free reports. | Analytics platform | Paid | |
| Niko Partners (Niko IQ) | The specialist source for China, SEA, and MENA games markets, with informative free summaries. Paid reports are expensive and the free layer is summary-level. Also tracks Chinese publishing licence approvals and explains regulation for outside readers, which pairs with the NPPA primary source. Enterprise pricing is custom. Free blog summaries. | Market research firm | Paid | |
| Lumikai: State of India Interactive Media & Gaming Report | The reference sizing for Indian gaming: gamer base (555M in CY25), revenue split, payer conversion, and the clearest data on the post-RMG-ban reset (+17% ex-RMG growth). Published by a gaming VC with a thesis to promote. Methodology blends third-party analytics, a ~3K-user survey and proprietary data. The fiscal/calendar-year basis has shifted between editions | Industry report | Free | |
| FICCI-EY media and entertainment report | EY's annual report on India's media and entertainment sector for the chamber FICCI, which sizes the online gaming segment with its parts: money gaming, video game in-app purchases and esports. The 2026 edition, Stories, scale and impact, launched on 24 March 2026, reports that the segment fell 17 percent in 2025 after the ban on money gaming. The segment includes money gaming, so it does not compare with a video games figure. | Industry report | Free | |
| Nazara Technologies (NSE: NAZARA) | A quarterly X-ray of the ecosystem: owns/holds NODWIN (esports events, AFK Gaming), Sportskeeda, Kiddopia, WCC, plus ad tech and location-based entertainment. Its calls narrate the whole Indian games economy, including the RMG-ban fallout (PokerBaazi) | Corporate IR | Free | |
| OnMobile Global (NSE: ONMOBILE) | A Bangalore company listed on the NSE and BSE that sells mobile games subscriptions, its ONMO cloud gaming platform and the quiz app Challenges Arena, largely through telecom operators, and reports gaming revenue apart: 1,545 million rupees of 5,245 million in the year to March 2026. Its revenue by region is Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and Asia, with India not broken out, so it reads the Indian-listed side of games more than the Indian market. | Corporate IR | Free |
Nothing here is ranked or scored. A figure reached through one of these sources carries the authority of the outlet that published it and no more.