Making games for India: "There's no replacement for being on the ground"

gamesindustry.biz:

The best way to improve your chances of success in India is to operate in India.

That was the key message from a panel at India Game Developers Conference in Hyderabad yesterday, in which investors discussed trends and opportunities when it came to funding games ventures in the country.

Courtside Ventures partner Deepen Parikh assured attendees that it is not imperative to know everything about India's games market before investing. In fact, he said it's "okay to be a little naive about the market," drawing on his own experience first investing in major Indian games publisher Winzo.

Winzo first reached out to Courtside in May 2020, during the height of COVID-19, and the investor struck up a partnership with the publisher within just a few months – a deal that has been greatly beneficial, Parikh said.

Since lockdown measures were in place, the agreement was arranged after a number of video calls, and Courtside hired both an accountant and a law firm based in India to handle the deal. Reflecting on his dealings with Indian businesses since, Parikh said: "There is no replacement for being on the ground."

"[India] is multiple countries in one," he said. "If you're not here regularly, and you don't understand the differences between what's happening in Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, as well as a lot of the smaller cities and towns, you're going to miss out on a lot of the biggest opportunities."

Play Ventures general partner Phylicia Koh made a similar point while explaining that the opportunities for video games in this market can be divided into two categories.

"You can make games in India for the rest of the world, although you'll face the same challenges as everybody else," she explained. "Otherwise, you can make games in India for India, which is a really really big market, [and] one that's young, has a significant population of folks who are 30, 20, or even younger. There are a lot of opportunities and tailwinds that exist in the Indian market that aren't necessarily found all