Mumbai: Vodafone Idea on Monday announced its foray into mobile gaming with the launch of Vi Games in partnership with Nazara Technologies. This will be the first phase of the company’s entry into the gaming space with subsequent expansion into esports, social gaming, streaming, and cloud gaming.

Vi Games will be a destination within the Vi App and will offer more than 1200+ mobile games across ten genres to Vi customers in HTML5 and Android format. Vi Games has a massive catalogue of titles to choose from out of which 80 per cent are exclusively available on Vi App. While 27 per cent of the portfolio has free games, at an additional fee, prepaid and postpaid customers can access premium and super-premium games.

Nazara Technologies have come on board as a technology partner and will support Vi Games by bringing its experience, competency and diversity of titles in mobile gaming. The company operates in 75 countries and has partnered with 50 telecom operators.

Casual gaming is a Rs 6,000 crore market in India growing at 40 per cent CAGR in the last two years. It is expected to grow by an additional 30 per cent in the coming two years to touch Rs 17,000 crore in value. The majority of gaming consumption in India happens via mobile devices which accounts for 95 per cent of consumption. There are about 400 million casual games in India which is expected to cross 650 million users by 2025. Globally, gaming accounts for 70 per cent of mobile consumer spending.

“We are seeing a significant uptake of gaming consumption in India with more than 95 per cent of gaming enthusiasts using the mobile device to enjoy a wide variety of content,” said Vodafone Idea chief marketing officer Avneesh Khosla. “Deeper penetration of smartphones and 4G availability has led to meteoric growth and adoption of gaming content making it a popular choice for fun and entertainment.”

“While GenZ was driving the first wave of adoption in gaming, recent growth is far more encompassing,” said Khosla. “Women account for 43 per cent of gamers in India and 50 per cent of women gamers are above the age of 34. Gaming attracts a diverse mix of cohorts regardless of age, gender and geography.  

“We see gaming as a major focus area of our digital content strategy and we intend to build a comprehensive play encompassing most facets of gaming with the aim of establishing Vi as a preferred destination for both, casual as well as serious gamers,” he added.

“Gaming is not only the future of entertainment in India but already a key mode of entertainment for hundreds of millions of Indians playing games on their mobile phones every day,” said Nazara Technologies founder and group MD Nitish Mittersain. “Nazara is delighted to work with Vi to bring our entire portfolio of gaming content, esports and interactive entertainment to their larger user base.”

The average Indian mobile user consumes an average of 16 Gb of data per month which is 60 per cent higher than the industry average at 9 Gb. Indians now spend one-third of their waking hours on mobile devices and at least three fourth Indians have played one mobile game.

“In the last two decades, we have seen a dramatic change in the macro factors like penetration of mobile devices and cheap data that have helped make India a global giant in gaming,’ noted Mittersain. “Today gaming is reaching across demographics and there is a lot of opportunity to collaborate.”