 "online gaming, lockdown")
Clarity in policies and creating a robust supply of skilled manpower can help in accelerating the Indian gaming ecosystem, a top Nazara Technologies official said.
Speaking at the GATO 2020, Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal said a nationwide gaming policy will help drive more investments in the gaming segment.
"I don't think government needs to promote the industry, government's role is to enable the underlying principles...It's not like you are looking for an investment from the government, you're looking for a framework, which can be put together and which gaming is an integral part of," he said.
He added that gamification is something that can be adopted in different schemes of government.
"...getting clarity on the commonality of policies on game of skill versus game of chance, ensuring that there is a common nationwide policy so that more and more investment can come into the gaming business without any ifs and buts.
"So I think providing clarity and creating those enabling policies is important rather than promoting industry. Industry is quite capable of running on steam and accelerating," he said.
Online games have grown at a significant pace over the last few years in India with terms like fantasy sports and e-sports gaining popularity. Questions around legality of such activity, that is whether some of these games would amount to gambling or betting have also come up.
Gambling and betting are state subjects with each state forming its own laws.
The Tamil Nadu government is considering a ban on online gambling such as rummy games in view of recent suicides by some people allegedly addicted to these, Chief Minister K Palaniswami had recently said.
In October, Andhra Pradesh had banned online gaming, online betting and gambling, and had urged the Centre to direct all internet service providers to block access to 132 websites and apps that were providing such services in the state.
Speaking at the event, Agarwal stated that there is a need to create a large supply chain with teachers and curriculum, which can be done in a public-private partnership model under the Skilling Council.
He added that along with creating supply, the focus also needs to be on how demand can be spurred.
"...we are a unique market after the US and China. There is no other such large market and there is no untapped large market left like India, where gaming is still very nascent.
"We have 360 million gamers, our gaming revenue is just USD 0.9 billion, compared to USD 14 billion of China, so it's such a large market which is still untapped, and we have the advantage of the population," he said.
(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
