Reliance Games to play in Indian market again

Amit Khanduja, CEO, Reliance Games, wants to tap into the gaming startup ecosystem and may look at establishing an accelerator programme for gaming entrepreneurs.

Khanduja, who took over the helm of Reliance Games, the mobile gaming division of Anil Dhirubhai Ambani promoted Reliance Entertainment Group, a year back is also bringing back the India focus within the company and re-entering the Indian market after a hiatus of almost three-years.

His reasons to enter India is the increasing smartphone penetration, low data cost and the resultant demand for content. "From 2008-09 period to 2016 there have been three big changes-- devices, data and content. With devices and data issue sorted what is left is content and that is where we see an opportunity," he said.

Reliance Entertainment's gaming segment in the last few years underwent some structural changes. To start with, in 2008-09, Zapak and Jump Games were two different entities. About three-and-a-half years back both the companies were merged.

"Back then we were entering into the international market and India was a big focus in terms of revenue but three years back we decided on focusing on one area. And we choose the international market," said Khanduja.

The international foray worked well for the company. Khanduja claims that they have had 80 million download globally for their games and of this just about 0.5 million were in India. Almost 70 per cent of the downloads are from western markets.

Some of the popular titles that the company has worked on include Hollywood titles such as Real Steel, Hunger Games, Pacific Rim, Hotel Transylvania among others. "We have 12 such games. In the action category we are considered as leading player. We are the defacto game developer for Hollywood titles," he added.

The Hollywood foray was also triggered due to the fact that Reliance Entertainment had partnership with Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider on the formation of DreamWorks Studios and has development deals with Nicolas Cage's Saturn Films, Jim Carrey's JC 23 Entertainment, George Clooney's Smokehouse Productions among others.

"We think it's the right time for us to be in India and we want to bring in our global experience to the market. So we will focus on partnering with big brands and IPs. For instance, 3.5 year back we started Reel Steel with 8 robots today it has 50 robots and 8 ways to play that game. Since then we have launched two other skews. We have built a franchise. We are also getting to a big action category. We want to be leader in the action category," he added.

Khanduja also believes that while India is the fastest growing mobile market, it will also be fastest downlodable market as well. According to Ficci-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry report 2015, gaming will become an Rs 4,580 crore industry by 2019, with mobile gaming leading the growth. The mobile gaming market in India has grown from Rs 820 crore in 2013 to Rs 1,070 crore in 2014, and is further projected to grow with a CAGR of 20 per cent to reach Rs 2,620 crore by 2019. The increase in the usage of smartphones and tablets is expected to encourage more users to access games on mobile web and app platforms.