In India, with over 620 MN people on the Internet consuming 12.5 GB of data per month on average, and more than 85% of which are on mobile, gaming has become hugely popular. With over 700 game development start-ups and studios, India is fast emerging as a global gaming market that's ripe with promise for ambitious game developers and publishers. Multiple opportunities have arisen driven by increasing founder and player sophistication, community, demand, and diversity. Beyond this, we’re also seeing a unique convergence as gaming becomes more like (and replaces) traditional digital media.
Globally, over the last few years, the games industry has seen free-to-play (F2P) hit the mainstream, smartphone games have come into the ascendant and we’ve seen Facebook gaming rise, but in India though, the F2P business model is in its early days.
It's time for the Indian F2P gaming industry to emerge and seize on the new opportunities in this new and evolving
gaming world. As structural changes transform the games industry, new winners will emerge. Why not India?
10B gaming apps downloads in 2020 with an average playtime of 7 hours/week stand as a testament to it. The Indian games industry is already valued at $1.5-2Bn and only expected to grow.
The world is Infinite and we can all help ourselves by helping each other. We need to promote the local community in India. The India F2P conference is designed to host current, relevant, and impactful discussions about the industry. We will share key insights, best practices, and lessons learned to help our industry grow!
Join us for a day of killer discussions with peers and industry leaders who are shaking up F2P. We’ve carefully crafted an incredible lineup of speakers who will arm you with new strategies, insights, and know-how to take your game to the next level!
No excuses. Let's go!
Manish Agarwal holds a bachelors degree in technology from the Regional Engineering College, Warangal and a post graduate diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He has approximately 20 years of experience in various fields including the gaming space and marketing. He was associated with Reliance Games for more than four years, in the capacity of chief executive officer of Zapak Mobile Games Private Limited and chief operating officer of Zapak Digital Entertainment Limited. Prior to that he was associated with UTV Software Communications Limited for about two years in the capacity of chief executive officer.
Vik Agarwal is a Lead Product Manager at Zynga, where he is helping launch the next generation of games. He has over seven years of experience working at multiple gaming studios, including Electronic Arts, DeNA, Machinezone and Amazon Games, working on over eight gaming titles that have grossed more than $4 billion dollars. With this background, Vik knows what truly drives the player AERM funnel, game monetization and world class live operations – it's all about providing players with an experience they truly value. Vik holds a Masters in Information Security Policy and Management from Carnegie Mellon and currently enjoys playing Clash Royale, Archero and Toy Blast on mobile and Age of Empires 2: DE on PC.
fAlexis focuses on operations, strategy, and M&A. He also co-leads Stillfront's game studios (including Moonfrog) alongside the Group CEO.
Alexis was previously the CEO of eRepublik Labs, the studio he founded and that is part of Stillfront. Within Atomico he sourced investments in Spain and France as well as in the Games, travel and consumer verticals and helped portfolio companies accelerate their growth.
Alexis is recognised by the World Economic Forum (Davos) as a Young Global Leader (YGL) in 2012. He is passionate about building successful organizations and management teams in fast growing environments, to deliver maximum results by offering the best service to customers.
Karan is heading Product at Nukebox Studios where he has released the Google Play Players Choice Award winning game of 2020; Spongebob: Krusty Cook Off and is helping Room Flip and other titles grow. He has previously worked on Farmville 2 at Zynga and Real Steel World Robot Boxing among other games as part of Reliance Games. In his 7 year long career in F2P he has launched 5 titles and has worked on over 10 games.
Shilpa Gaur works with Cympl Studios as Lead - Marketing & Strategy. She is a seasoned marketing professional who enjoys product & marketing scaling challenges. After running her own travel marketplace for 3+ years, she has worked with India's biggest vernacular social media network - ShareChat as Strategy Lead.
Cympl Studios is a remote first indian casual game developer. They have won awards for many of their games like Masala Express, Masala Madness & Super Krishna Crush. Currently they are working on the game Cooking My Story.
Go Saito is an Executive Officer of Sega Corporation, and the Head of Japan Asia Publishing Division.
He is responsible for all SEGA’s publishing activities across Asia, and oversees the South Korea and Taiwan subsidiaries.
He has a long career, working around the world, and across the industry, currently focusing on partnerships and business development, in addition to the looking after the demands of the publishing business throughout Asia.
Amit is the quintessential “Creative Bloke” juggling with the art, science and commerce of Gaming. Building original free-to-play IPs for the global audience at Nukebox Studios.
Nukebox is amongst the top-grossing mobile game developers in India. With a focus on building a large portfolio, Nukebox is an award winning studio, touted to be the next big thing in the mobile gaming scene.
Justin has 18+ years of experience as a founder and builder, scaling and exiting gaming, media, and technology companies across global and Indian markets. Prior to Lumikai, he was an angel investor, M&A advisor, and mentor across India’s technology startup ecosystem, having exited PlaySona, a Bangalore-based gamification and monetization platform, and as Head of Product & Strategy at India’s UTV Games and Managing Director at Fox Interactive Media, which acquired and operated News Corporation’s first portfolio of gaming and digital media properties including IGN, MySpace, RottenTomatoes and Gamespy Technologies.
Joseph Kim is CEO of LILA Games which is developing a super ambitious F2P Shooter game for mobile & PC. Previously Joseph was SVP of Games at NBCUniversal, Chief Product Officer at SEGA, and was the overall lead on the #1 top grossing title King of Avalon while at FunPlus. He also produces gamedev content at GameMakers (newsletter | YouTube) and created the Deconstructor of Fun TWIG podcast.
Paul is Chief Creative Officer for LILA Games.
Paul formerly worked at MZ on a number of top grossing games including Game of War.
He joined FunPlus and worked as a design lead on King of Avalon where he met Joseph Kim.
Paul later worked at a number of companies including SEGA Networks as Director of Design across SEGA’s Western mobile gaming portfolio.
Arvind Neelakantan, Technical Account Manager and Evangelist (India/ASEAN) for Epic Games specializes in games and in empowering film/animation studios in using real-time tech. Prior to Epic, he was the Head of technology (Indian Subcontinent) for Unity Technologies where he drove innovation strategy and provided technology leadership. He served as Disney India's lead software architect and was responsible for driving innovation through R&D activities and oversaw games/interactive content development. Before Disney, he was a full stack game engineer at Nickelodeon in Los Angeles for six years. At Nickelodeon, he developed MMORPGs and played a key role in the company’s technology business during the major transitions to cloud based computing.
Avinash Pandey is CTO of LILA Games.
Avinash is ambitious about building and shipping new products. He is a tech enthusiast who has been coding his entire career. Avinash Co-Founded a startup right after college in 2008. He helped his startup ship multiple titles in early days of App store. Was also part of Y Combinator 2012 batch.
After Y Combinator, they started focusing on building realtime multiplayer games including a shooter. Along with this he also produces tech pod casts on challenging areas of game development which are published on GameMakers.
Poornima has been part of the gaming industry for over 15 years and essayed roles varying from Game Designer to Producer to Studio head and Entrepreneur. She has been part of companies like Indiagames (Disney India), Jumpstart, GSN Games etc. She is currently a Director of Design at Zynga. She has worked on franchises like BioShock Mobile, How to Train your Dragons, Neopets, and FarmVille 2: Country Escape to name a few. She is a Women in Games Ambassador at WIGJ and the founder of Women in Games India (WIGIN) and also a Hall of Fame Inductee at the Global WIG Awards 2020, making her the first Indian game developer to receive such an honour. You can know more about her at http://drowlife.com/
An accomplished strategic and operational executive with 25+ years of leadership experience, Justin currently oversees Scopely's business in Asia Pacific, including it's offices in Shanghai, Singapore, Seoul and Tokyo, where he is focused on pursuing investment and M&A opportunities, as well as overseeing regional production & operations. Previously, Justin worked for The Walt Disney Company Asia Pacific in a number of GM roles ranging from Games to Consumer Products where he managed businesses for iconic brands such as Disney, Pixar, Marvel & Star Wars.
Salone Sehgal is the world's first female General Partner of a games and interactive VC fund. She co-founded Lumikai Fund, India's first early-stage interactive media and gaming VC, anchored by the world's largest games and media conglomerates. She has 15+ years of experience as a global games & new media investor, games entrepreneur, and former M&A banker. Previously, she was Principal at London Venture Partners (LVP), Europe's pioneering seed-stage gaming VC. She was also formerly a games enteprenuer building social worlds for female audiences. Prior to that, worked with Morgan Stanley and Barclays with $10Bn of M&A experience
GameMakers produces F2P games content for the game development community for free to expand the industry and help game developers improve their craft. GameMakers discusses best practices with some of the best game developers and games business leaders in the world. From Glenn Fiedler talking netcode to Tim Sweeney discussing the Economy of the Metaverse, we bring the world's foremost experts to share their secrets for the benefit of the F2P games community.
