“We have already made more than 100% of last year's revenue,“ said Tanay Tayal, founder of Moonfrog Labs.With Jio winning over a large number of users, rival telecom operators, too, eventually began offering competitive rates on 4G data connectivity, thus encouraging more people to spend longer hours online on their phones. Total time spent surged to 2,120 million hours during the first quarter of 2017 from 1,630 million hours during the fourth quarter of 2016, according to App Annie.“The share of 2017 revenue (so far) for Octro, Moonfrog, Nazara Games, Play Games24x7, Reliance Games versus their 2016 full-year revenues was over 80%. It's a certain sign the (Indian gaming) market is maturing,“ said a spokesman for App Annie.For US-based Imangi Studios, the developer of Temple Run 2, one of the most-downloaded games in the country, this surge in online mobile usage has contributed to India being a massive growth market.“We have seen our daily downloads and daily players roughly double between December 2016 and May 2017,“ said cofounder Natalia Luckyanova.Delhi-based Octro, popular for its card games, too, has already crossed its 2016 revenue. It attributed the growth in users and revenue to the availability of cheaper data plans and improved support for online payment options.“We have seen better conversion rates to paying users and more users flowing into the funnel,“ said Saurabh Aggarwal, CEO of Octro, declining to share specific numbers. “We are probably 2-2.5 times our monthly active users if we compare May 2017 to December 2016.“ Gaming startups Accel Partners-backed MechMocha and KhelPlay Rummy are seeing several new gamers from smaller cities and towns.

Source: Economic Times June 21, 2017 03:00 UTC