THE new sunday express Voices Anand Neelakantan Debashis Chatterjee Ravi Shankar Dinesh Singh Dr Ramya Alakkal Swami Sukhabodhananda MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment july 12 2026 SUNDAY PAGES 12 $5.9 billion India’s gaming market size in 2025, projected to nearly triple by 2034, making it one of the world’s fastest-growing gaming economies 90% Share of gaming in India that takes place on smartphones on high tion ambi na shu Ra Himan mall as g from Comin proved that e e town, h udiences valu ne a phy gra onli ver geo talent o n O e am G now pass’ is time reen sed on ‘ h the sc ion rai erat roug re a gen ower th al p whe d cultur g Shift, min s, an reat Ga mpanie s, co ia’s G billion ide Ind munitie Ins om Mobile game downloads s, c in FY 2024-25, the g career buildin 8.45 highest in the world Game changer Naman Mathur He helped legitimise gaming as a career for millions of young Indians. He says long-term success now depends on discipline, and reinvention O By Anjali Kochhar n a humid evening in Mumbai, inside an esports café glowing with RGB lights and high-performance gaming rigs, players dissect tactics with the intensity of cricket pundits analysing an IPL final. What stands out is not the noise or the screens. It is the women—a third of the room—gaming with the same focus as everyone else. Nobody is staring. Nobody is surprised. That quiet normalcy says more about Indian gaming’s evolution than any market report. A decade ago, most parents dismissed gaming as a distraction. Today many are asking a very different , question: can it be a career? The answer is increasingly yes. The turning point came during the pandemic. As lockdowns pushed millions indoors, gaming became more than a way to pass time. Young Indians, particularly Gen Z, spent hours online playing with friends, discovering global gaming communities, and watching professional streamers and esports tournaments. What began as entertainment soon revealed an ecosystem of opportunities—from competitive esports and live streaming to game development, content creation, casting, coaching and event management. For many gaming transformed from a hobby into a , viable profession. The boom extended far beyond playing games. Gaming content exploded across YouTube and streaming platforms as audiences flocked to watch professional gamers, esports tournaments and live creators. Brands, advertisers, smartphone companies and gaming studios quickly followed the audience, investing in what had been a relatively small sector before 2020. Today, gaming sits at the intersection of technology, entertainment and creativity, bringing together software development, animation, storytelling, design, artificial intelligence and digital content creation. It is also helping diversify India’s digital economy beyond IT services. More importantly, it is challenging conventional ideas of what constitutes a profession. For Gen Z, the appeal is as much financial as it is creative. Unlike traditional careers tied to a single fastest finger first Payal Dhare The first Indian woman to win a global esports award, she has helped break gender stereotypes while proving gaming can be a serious career employer, gaming offers multiple revenue streams. Professional esports players earn prize money, team salaries, sponsorships, and coaching fees. Successful streamers and gaming influencers generate income through platform monetisation, brand partnerships, subscriptions, and fan donations. Skilled freelancers are finding work in game art, animation, coding, sound design, quality testing, video editing, community management, and game localisation. The earning potential is no longer insignificant. Entry-level esports professionals may earn `20,000 to `60,000 a month through team contracts and tournaments, while established players can command annual salaries running into several lakhs, supplemented by sponsorships. Behind the scenes, experienced game developers, designers and technical specialists can also command salaries comparable to those in mainstream technology companies. The shift mirrors the evolution of sport itself in India. There was a time when pursuing cricket professionally seemed unrealistic, before icons transformed it into a respected career. The same journey unfolded later with badminton, chess, tennis, and other disciplines. As India’s digital economy matures, gaming is undergoing a similar transition. Identity Play For years, Indian gamers grew up hearing the same refrain: “Beta, ye sab band karo.” What slowly dismantled that consensus was not a single tournament or blockbuster title, but a steady accumula- tion of proof. PUBG Mobile, affordable internet, and the creator economy did something transformative: they made gaming visible. “Gaming communities today are not just playing spaces; they are identity spaces. Young people are choosing their tribe, their aesthetic, their social world through gaming,” says Divya Kholakiya, Founder of Gamingaza. That sense of belonging is a recurring theme. “Young people today are going into gaming because it gives them an identity—not just that, it strengthens their bond with their friends,” says Omkar Joshi, a Mumbai-based gaming content creator who is now planning to launch his own merchandise line and card game. When Naman Mathur, better known as Mortal and Co-founder of S8UL Esports, built a community of millions on YouTube, he offered something Indian parents could not easily dismiss: evidence. Brij Vishal Rajput, gaming and tech creator known as @bvrbreezy, says, “When I started creating content and saw people genuinely engaging with it, I realised there was real potential to turn this into a career. That moment completely changed how I viewed gaming.” For others, gaming opened doors they never knew existed. Satva Moliya, a Pearl Academy Videogame Production alumnus from its Bengaluru campus, traces his journey to a single discovery while playing GTA. “I discovered these were called mods,” he says. “I started learning how to install them, and over time became interested in creating my own.” Today, known as SA09 in modding circles, he is working towards creating original games, even if the financial rewards remain uncertain. Ridit Sharma, an aspiring gamer, describes a similar evolution. “Gaming was always something I enjoyed, but over time it changed,” he says. “I started feeling it in my nerves—curious about how games are made, designed, who does all of this.” Income remains modest for now, but his ambitions are not. His family’s attitude has shifted too. The wider culture is beginning to catch up. “Creators like Anshul Bisht, Piyush Joshi, and Payal Dhare have built massive audiences and successful careers,” says Samarth Kulshreshtha, Founder and Creative Director of Samarth Adworks Studio. “The child playing games today could become India’s next big gamer tomorrow.” The proof arrived in bank accounts. Raj Varma was working at a diamond factory in Surat when PUBG Mobile changed the trajectory of his life. “At that time, even `10,000 felt huge for me,” says Raj, better known as Snax, now 26. “Then suddenly we were seeing tournaments where teams could win lakhs.” His team reached the Delhi finals and finished fifth. The payout was life-changing. “Each player earned around one lakh rupees,” he says. That single transaction did more to convince his family that gaming was real than any explanation ever could. Persistence, it turns out, is a recurring theme in Indian gaming. Gulrez Khan, better known as Joker Ki Haveli, now has 1.81 million YouTube subscribers, but came close to abandoning the industry altogether. He was seriously considering returning to Qatar for a conventional job when a conversation with Lokesh Jain, co-founder of S8UL, changed his mind. “That discussion made me rethink what I was building,” he says. “I realised this was not just gameplay or entertainment.” Today his work extends far beyond playing games. It involves scripting, production, audience engagement and building narratives across BGMI streams and vlogs. “Gaming does not have a fixed structure in the beginning,” he says. “You have to build everything from scratch— your audience, your consistency, your Turn to page 2