With increasing time being spent indoors, India saw an undeniable gaming boom over the past 18 months.Gaming has now achieved escape velocity in India, competing for user attention with other popular entertainment categories such as short-form video, streaming services, and social networks. Due to affordable smartphone and data rates, Indians have a powerful gaming console right in their palm. And gaming is not just popular among young adult males only, but is Indian women have also taken to gaming with enthusiasm. As per Inmobi report Understanding India’s Women Mobile Gamers, 43 per cent of smartphone gamers are women and 49 per cent of women gamers are above the age of 34 years.
InMobi surveyed 240 women smartphone gamers and analyzed over 1.5 trillion programmatic ad requests for this study. The study also includes engagement data between Jan 2021 to April 2021 from VTION, a Digital Consumer Behaviour & Analytics company. The VTION panel for this study comprised of 1,419 smartphone gamers across 15 states in India.
Commenting on the rise in women mobile gamers across India, InMobi managing director, Asia Pacific Vasuta Agarwal said, “It is definitely a good time to let go of archaic notions that gaming is popular only among young adult males. The shift in behavior is so interesting to observe as women take to gaming with great enthusiasm. Gaming has become increasingly popular among women of all ages and marital status, defying old-school conventions. Nearly 52 per cent of India’s women gamers live in metros, while 29 per cent live in small towns, clearly becoming the new face of entertainment for women across India.”
Here are the key findings:
- 49 per cent of Indian women started playing mobile games due to the pandemic.
- 33 per cent of women gamers are from age group 18 to 24 years, 25 per cent of gamers are between 25 to 34 years of age, seven per cent are 35 to 44 years of age, eight per cent 45 to 54 years of age and nine per cent are 55 years of age and more.
- 47 per cent of women gamers are unmarried, 32 per cent are married with children, 11 per cent married without children and 10 per cent are others.
- 53 mins/day is the average time spent by Indian Women on gaming apps.
- 35 per cent of women spend 10 mins per gaming session in smartphones, 30 per cent spend 11 to 30mins,17 per cent spend 31 to 60 mins and lastly 18 per cent spend more than an hour.
- Top motivations for gaming on smartphones – to relax/ be entertained, to improve skills, to connect with friends/family, to compete and win to fight boredom.
- Most popular made in India games/ platforms among Women are Ludo King, WinZO, MPL, mGamer, Carrom Pool disc game.
- Most popular genres among Women are Action, Casual, Board, Arcade, Sports, Fantasy
- Women spend 88 mins for games in action genre, 42 mins for games in board genre, 43 mins for games in casual genre, 37 mins for card games, 47 mins for sports and 56 mins for strategy games.
- Other apps that women gamers use are Social Networking, Music, Photo and Video, Sports and Entertainment, Photography, Lifestyle.
- 52 per cent of the top ten apps downloaded by women are Made in India signifying a shift in both the Indian app ecosystem and the preferences of female gamers.
- In West India share of downloads in Q1 is 25.30 per cent where the top five apps with most downloads are Ludo King, Garena Free Fire 3volution, Candy Crush Saga, WinZo, PUBG.
North India’s share of downloads in Q1 is 21.30 per cent where the top five apps with most downloads are Ludo King, Candy Crush Saga, Garena Free Fire 3volution, WinZo, Ludo Gold.
South India’s share of downloads in Q1 is 16.2 per cent where the top five apps with most downloads are Ludo King, Garena Free Fire 3volution, Candy Crush Saga, WinZo, Ludo King, PUBG.
In East India, the share of downloads in Q1 is 20.40 per cent where the top five apps with most downloads are Ludo King, Garena Free Fire 3volution, Candy Crush Saga, WinZo, MPL. - The top five women mobile gaming epicenters in India are Delhi NCR (share of national downloads: 13 per cent | Top Genres: action, board, casual | Time Spent by women players: 45 mins per day | Popular Games: Ludo King, Subway Surfers, Dream11), Maharashtra (share of national downloads: 16.1 per cent | Top Genres: action, board, casual | Time Spent by women players: 49 mins per day | Popular Games: Candy Crush Saga, WinZO, Among Us), West Bengal (share of national downloads : 8.5 per cent | Top Genres: action, board, casual | Time Spent by women players: 67 mins per day | Popular Games: Ludo Ninja, Clash of Clans, MPL), Karnataka (share of national downloads: eight per cent | Top Genres: action, board, casual | Time Spent by women players: 49 mins per day | Popular Games: Garena Free Fire, Carrom Pool, MPL), Andhra and Telengana (share of national downloads: 12 per cent | Top Genres: action, board, casual | Time Spent by women players: 49 mins per day | Popular Games: Aha Games, mGamer, WinZO).
- The majority of Indian women, 75 per cent and above, are committed gamers, playing mobile games every day. Across age groups, and cities, Indian women love their mobile games. The time spent by committed gamers is significantly higher than regular or occasional gamers as they log on to play several times a day. Committed gamers enjoy playing a wide variety of games and can have upto 95 downloaded games on their devices.
- When it comes to discovering new games, each avatar has a different source that they like to tap into. Committed women gamers are most likely to rely on app store recommendations (25 per cent) or ads (28 per cent) on other gaming apps (24 per cent), whereas regular women gamers are far more likely to rely on ads on other apps (41 per cent), app store recommendation (31 per cent) and 14 per cent ads on gaming apps for their next download suggestions. Occasional women gamers, on the other hand, additionally rely heavily on word-of-mouth recommendations (22 per cent), social media (26 per cent), and ads on other apps (41 per cent) as they are only interested in playing games that are already popular.
- Committed women gamers in India spend around twice as much time gaming each day compared to regular and occasional women gamers. There has been a surge in both the time spent and the number of games they play. Some of the most popular games enjoyed by committed women gamers include Call of Duty, Clash of Clans, and Hill Climber. Interestingly, only 20 per cent of the top 10 mobile games played by committed women gamers are made in India.
- 79 per cent women gamers are familiar with ads and clearly prefer to watch them in exchange for benefits that help them progress in a game, rather than paying for them (21 per cent pay money for benefits).
- Ad recall is also very high amongst them about 55 per cent, especially when the ads are engaging and about a topic of their interest and 45 per cent can’t recall in-game ads.
