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eSports : A New Billion-Dollar Market in India

If you are an expert in something, you have the opportunity to make a career out of it. And recently this philosophy has extended towards one such thing known as eSports. Gone are the days where gaming was considered as only a mere source of entertainment. And by the time it becomes an official discipline at 2022 Asian Games, eSports would have a large base of competitors from India.

The Indian digital gaming industry has seen tremendous growth with behemoths like Alibaba backed-Paytm, Tencent, Youzu and Nazara investing in it. Being one of the top 5 countries for mobile gaming in the world, the industry is already worth $890 million. And with the demands for games showing a meteoric rise there are more than 250 game development companies with at least two startups coming up every month.

It is estimated that this market will be worth $1.1 billion by 2020 and the number of users projected to be 628 million by then. Meanwhile Gamification has started a new trend upon which some investors were quick to capitalize on.

Nazara technologies, a mobile game publishing company, has acquired a 55% stake in gaming solutions company Nodwin Gaming which brought the premier ESL platform to India and plans to invest $20 million to develop eSports over the next five years. Along with four million eSports enthusiasts the common goal which everyone shares, publishers and fans alike, is to create an ecosystem to enable competitive online and offline gaming and to achieve the spectator sports status in India.

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