How This Startup Built A Global INR 1,000 Cr Gaming Business From India

India is playing it faster. But others are playing it smarter. 

With downloads reaching 8.45 Bn in FY25, India remained the champion in global mobile gaming, but ranked only eighth in terms of revenue. Affordable smartphones, cheap data, and a youthful demographic have transformed an arena once dominated by consoles and PCs into a $3.8 Bn market in India, expanding at 20% a year to reach $9.2 Bn by 2029. 

If it’s the age of ‘make in India, make for the world’, then why won’t games seize the borders and let the world play games designed and built in India?

“For many years now, India has been viewed as a consumer market for games built elsewhere. That needs to change. With the talent, and scale we have, we should be building games the world plays,” MPL founder Sai Srinivas said on how he built his playbook for the $126.06 Bn global market that’s growing at 5.40% annually to create a $163.98 Bn opportunity with 2.5 Bn users by 2030.

An early success on the home turf with 1 Mn daily active users reached within 100 days of launch and INR 2.87 Cr revenue scaled in six months inspired MPL to look beyond Indian shores. It entered Indonesia in 2019. 

According to an EY report, India represented around 20% of the global gaming user base and about 15% of all gaming app downloads, exceeding the US and Brazil, the next two largest markets, put together, when MPL logged into the American gaming space in 2021. The US market was well on course to surpass $36.64 Bn in revenue by the end of 2025. 

A year later, parent M-League acquired GameDuell, a German card and board gaming studio with a strong free-to-play portfolio. GameDuell’s Rummy, Belote, Skat, and Tarot are live in over 30 countries today.

When MPL said bom dia this year with a soft launch, the Brazilian market stood at $2.8 Bn. One of the strongest markets for mobile gaming in Latin America, Brazil, is expected to see its overall gaming revenue grow at 9.9% to over $5 Bn by 2030. 

As India evolves from a market of gamers to that of game-makers, there’s a bug that never ceases to bite. It is monetisation. The biggest market in the world in terms of installs has only 148 Mn out of its 591 Mn active gamers making in-app purchases (IAP). 

But, the game is not about gamers alone. The domestic market has long lacked the infrastructure that could support game developers build, monetise, and distribute at scale.

M-League launched Blast+ last year as a publishing arm for its long-term bet on helping developers scale games with built-in monetisation, distribution, and marketing capabilities. “We believe that free-to-play (F2P) represents the next big opportunity for gaming in India,” Srinivas told the media while rolling out the platform. 

Roughly 50% of M-League’s revenue today comes from outside India. The company has maintained a steady growth over the years and claims to be one of the youngest in the sector to turn EBITDA-positive.

Rocking In India, Eyeing The American Pie

“Our key focus now is to ensure that we are successful in Brazil and the US, grow our revenue contribution from there, and eventually expand to as many geographies as possible,” MPL founder Srinivas said.

With its expanding footprint, M-League’s business has diversified exponentially. While overseas businesses make up half of its revenue pie, the domestic market contributes the rest. The split between product types is also equal between real money or skill gaming and free-to-play. Within the F2P segment, most of the revenues come from GameDuell.

Along its overseas voyage, MPL encountered varying user behaviour across geographies and the approach to products varied in sync. The US is its most promising user cohort, and is growing faster than that in India.

The operating revenue of the Indian entity of gaming unicorn MPL zoomed 8% to INR 879.5 Cr ($ 102 Mn) in FY24 from INR 814.2 Cr ($94 Mn) a year back, according to filings with the ministry of corporate affairs. This excludes its performance in other countries.

For the Singapore-based parent entity, M-League, the total revenue from operations zoomed to INR 1,099 Cr ($127.9 Mn) from INR 898 Cr ($104.6 Mn), while its India revenue reached INR 758 Cr ($88.3 Mn) from INR 560 Cr ($65.3 Mn) in the year under review.

While audited numbers for FY25 will be released later this year, M-Leauge confirms that it was a year of strong business across the board, with all units turning profitable and topline shooting up 30–40% on strong tailwinds from both Indian and overseas markets.

Today, if MPL has about 7–8 Mn monthly, M-Leauge’s other businesses host 5–6 Mn of its gamer base.

Breaking the ground abroad wasn’t an easy task, though. “There are very few Indian product companies that have succeeded outside India,” Srinivas said. “For us, the first two years in the US were very tough. It took time to understand what American users wanted, but once we adapted the product, we saw traction.”

For M-Leauge, one of its biggest international triumphs has been the acquisition of GameDuell. Then a web-focussed skill-gaming company, GameDuell has transformed under M-Leauge into a free-to-play powerhouse today. “Their revenue has grown from $25 Mn to $80 Mn,” Srinivas said. “We kept their strategy simple – build card games with strong communities and monetise them globally.”

M-League scales across three markets – India, the US and Brazil – to become the default platform for both real money and free-to-play gaming both within and outside India. Whether it’s through MPL, GameDuell, or Blast+, the company is betting on a multi-format, multi-market future.

Who’s In The Global Game, Who’s Shying?

As India’s online gaming ecosystem evolved, the key players have taken distinctly different strategic paths, particularly when going beyond borders. While every company shares the ambition to scale, their models, product philosophies, and go-to-market approaches have sharp contrasts.

MPL claims that its platform-first, global-facing strategy keeps it ahead of the game. The company sees itself as more than just a gaming app – it aims to be the ‘app store for skill-based gaming’. This approach allows third-party developers to publish games on the MPL platform, offering a diverse portfolio from chess and carrom to fantasy cricket and puzzles.

Its close rival Dream11 has, instead, remained firmly focussed on the Indian market. As a fantasy sports platform, it is deeply tied to the Indian sporting culture, especially cricket, and depends heavily on licensing deals, sports IP, and real-time match engagement.

Fantasy sports are regulated differently across countries, and replicating Dream11’s playbook abroad would mean building brand trust, sports licensing, and user education from scratch. This makes global expansion costly and complex.

WinZO, traditionally an India-first platform for casual games in over 12 regional languages, plans to go global, with Brazil as its testbed. Brazil offers a mobile-first audience similar to India, making it a viable market for WinZO’s low-data, vernacular-style, socially gamified formats, according to the founder.

However, unlike MPL, WinZO’s content and reward-heavy model may not be easily ported. Local tastes, cultural gaming habits, and regulatory differences would call for major reworking of the product.

Poster child of Indian gaming, Nazara Technologies, has taken the acquisition route to diversify globally. Instead of exporting a single product, Nazara is building a gaming empire by acquiring companies across esports, gamified learning, and publishing. This strategy reduces the risk of failures and is also less cohesive than MPL’s platform model and lacks the brand consistency of Dream11 or WinZO.

Platform Playbook, Not A Gaming Hub

“Where boundaries roar louder than the crowd!” The nation cheered for the IPL. “If it could revolutionise the game of cricket and redefine business around the sport, then why not in mobile gaming?” wondered Sai Srinivas and Shubh Malhotra. That was 2018, when the duo went on to set up Mobile Premier League (MPL) with a clear vision: to build a platform that would host a world cup for video games.

“We asked ourselves, if someone builds a great video game, why shouldn’t players from 20 or 30 countries be able to compete in a world cup for that too? That was the gap MPL was meant to fill,” Srinivas said.

The team first launched a barebones platform with a few casual games and tested it locally. The value proposition was minimalist: play skill-based games, compete with others, and earn rewards. That clarity helped MPL scale quickly. “Our first thousand users came almost entirely through YouTube,” Srinivas recalled. “We worked with content creators who spoke about MPL, and that helped us onboard our earliest players.”

MPL signed up then Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli as its brand ambassador to set the tone for its mainstream push. The company has expanded its portfolio in sync from a handful of casual games to a catalogue of over 60 titles across puzzles, board games, and fantasy sports. 

While picking up the rules of the game, the company learned to not rely on a single breakout game. “Variety made a big difference for us in the long term,” Srinivas recounted. “Our focus has always been on building a platform that would power both internal and third-party games.”

It is the same vision that’s manifesting in Blast+. The company rolled out the platform to help global and indie developers bring their F2P titles to India. Blast+ is designed for localisation, tuned to UPI integration and policy compliance, and capable of hosting live ops. 

“We aimed to deliver outcomes that Tencent or Netis did for gaming in China. For skill gaming, we have MPL, and for free-to-play, we launched Blast+.” M-League’s broader plan is to evolve into a developer-first ecosystem, where external studios can publish and monetise directly. That will allow it to scale its game library and reach without overextending its internal teams.

Drawing Up Gameplan, Taking On Hurdles

India remains a complex, but high-potential market. Low per-user revenue, regulatory volatility, and payment frictions are persistent hurdles. “But these aren’t deal-breakers,” affirmed Srinivas. “ARPU in India is lower compared to mature markets, but what makes India unique is the scale. Whether you earn INR 100 from one user or INR 1 each from 100 users, the outcome is the same. And in India, that 100 can quickly become a million.” The rise of UPI too has helped unlock seamless payments. 

Regional gameplay preferences are also shaping product decisions. “Certain board games or formats perform better in specific states due to cultural familiarity. These insights help us build better for different audiences.” 

But, tackling regulations is often a huge challenge, especially after the government imposed a 28% GST on real-money gaming. “The tax burden for our skill gaming business went up nearly 350–400%. It was an existential moment,” Srinivas said. MPL responded by streamlining operations and fast-tracking game launches. The pivot worked. MPL’s India revenue grew over 35% in FY24, despite the tax shock.

With the AI wave raging full throttle, MPL has begun integrating AI tools into its workflows, though no transformative overhaul is on the cards. For the next few years, the company plans to expand its F2P portfolio in India, widen its global footprint and build developer tools and publishing capabilities. M-Leauge is also actively exploring strategic investments in Indian studios, aiming to build a stronger creative and monetisation engine.

Despite growing noise around live-streaming, metaverse integrations, and influencer ecosystems, MPL remains grounded in fundamentals. “We’re not chasing trends,” Srinivas said. “Our ambition is to build the defining gaming platform out of India for the world.”

From the gamers side, India’s core user base is aged 25 to 35,  with 66% from non-metro cities and 43% being first-time earners. The market for mobile games appears to be in the fast lane with youths, who must have long shot past 371.4 Mn in count by 2021, at the wheel.  

[Edited by Kumar Chatterjee]