PremiumNEW DELHI: Indian gaming firm Jetsynthesys has acquired Chennai-based e-sports company Skyesports, which is amongst the largest e-sports companies in the country with a grassroots play. The company has a hold on India’s professional gaming market, and intends to use the acquisition of Skyesports to build a base at the grassroots level, said Rajan Navani, vice chairman and managing director of JetSynthesys. He did not disclose what the deal value.
“Someone starts off as a casual gamer, then becomes a mid-core gamer and eventually looks at how they can become a professional gamer. I think e-sports really addresses that, where the game is a sport," said Rajan Navani, Vice Chairman and Managing Director of JetSynthesys. Skyesports has intellectual properties like the Skyesports League, Skyesports Grand Slam and more.
“We will work together to create many IPs for the gaming and esports enthusiasts in the country," said Gnana Shekar, chief marketing officer (CMO) of Skyesports.
India’s e-sports industry has been fueled by games like PUBG Mobile over the past two years. Navani noted that mobile games are likely going to drive growth in the industry and it will take a while for Indian gamers to truly adopt high end console and PC-based e-sports. He said though India was a big market for gaming, it accounts for less than 1% of the industry right now.
JetSynthesys also makes a lot of its money from building mobile games. The company had partnered with Japanese gaming giant Square Enix earlier this year to build the mobile game Ludo Zenith. It is also the developer of popular mobile games like Real Cricket and Sachin Saga. Navani said the firm intends to add more complexity to its mobile games to enhance the element of skill in them, thereby making them ready for the e-sports arena.
“India is still playing catch up when it comes to PC and console games, because we never had high bandwidth connectivity into homes, which is why Korea etc. grew. And consoles of course had cost hurdles. But India is catching up massively in mobile. About 17% of all games downloaded on Google Play last year were from India," he said.
According to an August 2021 report by mobile analytics firm App Annie, India was the top market in terms of mobile game downloads in 2021. The country accounted for over 4 billion game downloads during the first half of 2021 alone. In comparison, the next three countries on the list — the United States, Brazil and Indonesia — had just over 2 billion game downloads each.
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