Pune-Based SuperGaming’s Battle Royale Title Indus Crosses 5 Mn Pre-Registrations

Made-in-India battle royale title Indus has crossed 5 Mn pre-registrations on Google Play, its developer SuperGaming said on Monday.

The Pune-based game development startup plans to release Indus in closed beta during the upcoming festive season.

SuperGaming has also released a cinematic trailer for the game, with several characters voiced by prominent personalities and creators such as Olympic pistol shooter Heena Sidhu, Indian gaming YouTuber Techno Gamerz, popular content creators such as Magsplay (Mansi Gupta) and GamerFleet (Anshu Bisht), among others.

“With Indus, we are hosting community playtests that give them the chance to play the game and help us improve upon it with feedback — this includes players as well as esports pros. In addition to this, we are also working with and empowering content creators, regardless of the number of followers they have, to create engaging content around Indus,” Roby John, CEO and cofounder of SuperGaming, told Inc42.

“Some of them have never seen behind the scenes how games are made, so nurturing that talent is just as crucial. This ranges from simply giving them access to our team to helping them on their creator journey, giving them tools to make better videos like gimbals,” John added.

Set up in 2017 by Roby John, Navneet Waraich, Sanket Nadhani, Christelle D’cruz, and Sreejit J, SuperGaming is building mobile games such as MaskGun, Silly Royale, and Tower Conquest. It is also building its own gaming engine called SuperPlatform for running hyperscale, real-time multiplayer games.

For Indus, the startup is focussing on creating a futuristic society against the backdrop of Indian civilisation, and art and culture to offer gamers a fresh yet relatable and immersive experience.

“From a business perspective, we estimate about 400 Mn Indians play battle royale games and that genre alone is a billion dollar market in the country… (but) no game has been built for an India-first audience until now… the timing is right (now). The Indian audience is primed and ready,” John said.

John said that Indian gamers have a strong preference for international content and titles like BGMI, COD Mobile, Minecraft, GTA 5, and Valorant are very popular.

“The audience are already aware of what’s good and fun as well as have a baseline expectation of what a solid battle royale should be. It’s an opportunity for us to convince them that a made-in-India game can be world-class, just like the games they’re already playing. Our expectation is to capture a large part of this market,” he added.

According to a report by FICCI-EY, India was home to 390 Mn online gamers in 2021. Although the country added 30 Mn gamers last year, not many new games were released by homegrown gaming studios. Pune-based SuperGaming is one of the few companies tapping into the new opportunities in India.