The vast Indian gaming market is primed for a massive shift as the focus for marketers changes from pure installs to measurable value.
The market is the second-largest globally, surpassing 500 million players, according to Niko Partners, and it is also the fastest growing. Without strategies that combine intent, cohort analysis, and user retention at core, raising revenue through the increasingly important in-app purchase (IAP) route becomes that much harder.
Mintegral, Singular, and the Game Developer Association of India (GDAI) recently partnered to assess the app gaming market in India, uncovering mobile marketing benchmarks that uncover the current state of the market.
While data across Q1 2026 reveals the size and scale of the country’s gaming habits, how a typical game makes its money, and how they reach their users, the critical insight was that that install game has been won – now it’s time for leading players and small companies to work on uncovering strategies to keep the users they’ve fought so hard to acquire.
Installs Are At Their Peak: Is It Time to Pivot?
The vast, diverse, and ultimately competitive nature of the Indian gaming market has, in the past, led marketers to focus on low-cost installs as the primary goal.
However, Irfan Shaik, Director of Partnerships at Singular, says, “India has already won the install game. The next decade belongs to studios that can identify, by day three, which players are likely to retain, monetize, and deliver long-term value, then scale toward them.”
Moving beyond the install is especially important for leading Mid-core and Hardcore games whose revenue is tied to in-app purchases (benchmarked at 70% of revenues vs. in-app advertising’s 30%). Mid-core and Hardcore titles lead the way in installs in country, with 327.1m downloads in Q1 2026. Hypercasual (272m) and Casual (258m) follow closely behind. If such gaming companies want to make the most of those massive volumes, doubling down on the strategies that work will help reduce waste.
This is especially important as the vast majority of Indian gaming app downloads — 97.5% in fact — originate from Android devices. Marketers need to be mindful of the typical high churn rate of Android users, accommodating for disposable use by netting a conversion quickly.
India Lags Behind in Diversifying Marketing Channels
Channel diversification is already part of India’s growth marketing reality, not some far-away marketing concept. However, many apps use fewer channels than the global mean. For example, a typical casual gaming app in India averages at 13 channels per app (on average), below the 17-channel global baseline.
As apps become more sophisticated and competitive, the number of channels marketers use tends to increase. This is because it becomes harder to find new users if you stick to the same few channels over time.
India also has a separate issue to grapple with: multiple storefronts. It’s not just a place where users stick to the Google Play Store; it’s a place where they can find multiple places to download and try new apps. Multiple ASO and in-store marketing strategies are the norm, something especially important if you’re starting a campaign from elsewhere.
India Can Build, But Can It Grow?
According to the GDAI (Game Developer Association of India), the ambition of Indian game developers has evolved from “Can we build games?” to “Can we build sustainable gaming businesses?”
Sridhar Muppidi, a Chairperson of the GDAI, says, “India has won the install race. The next race is building sustainable gaming businesses. The studios that will define the next decade are those that combine great game development with disciplined growth: product-market fit, monetization, retention, analytics, and global publishing.”
Building apps is an established framework — growing global businesses is the next step, and requires much more out of a team to get right.
(Views are personal)
