According to Rahul Tewari, the chief financial officer of Mumbai-based Games24X7, this year has been a big one for the Indian online gaming business. Additionally, he claimed that the online gaming sector has the ability to draw in both domestic and international investors, produce jobs, and bring in money for the government coffers.
The pandemic caused a significant rise in this industry. In fact, Games24x7, behind Dream11 and Mobile Premier League, was the third gaming start-up to reach a billion-dollar valuation in March 2022. With a valuation of $2.5 billion, the company raised $75 million in a fundraising round headed by Malabar Investments.
Although COVID-19 offered the business a boost to expand, analysts say the current difficulty is to maintain the growth rates. Additionally, with over 450 million users, one of the main challenges facing firms in this industry is the absence of regulation, particularly for real-money gaming due to worries that it could generate issues like addiction and cross the line into gambling.
Tewari thinks that a policy and regulatory framework, together with ongoing attention to expanding this industry, can provide this "sunrise" sector the much-needed boost.
Tewari pointed out that the government has made efforts to assist this industry. The creation of the Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming, and Comics (AVGC) Task Force under MeitY, the designation of MeitY as the nodal ministry for online gaming, and the publication of the draught rules for online gaming, which concentrate on creating regulatory frameworks particular to the gaming industry, are a few of them. He continued by noting that the entire industry is dedicated to working with the government to give this industry and its players a progressive business climate.
