India’s gaming market may be booming, but premium gaming remains a tough level to unlock. Enter ARC, a newly launched gaming hardware company that wants to change that, one handheld device at a time.
Founded by lifelong gamers Jobin Joseph and Kaustubh K Jadhav, the Bengaluru-based start-up has announced plans to build handheld gaming hardware designed specifically for Indian consumers. Its pitch is simple: make premium gaming less of a luxury boss battle and more of an everyday experience.
India boasts one of the world’s largest gaming communities, powered largely by smartphones. Yet for many players, the leap from mobile titles to console-quality gaming remains prohibitively expensive. ARC believes that it is the gap worth plugging.
The company is betting that the next chapter of India’s gaming story will be written not just on phones, but on portable devices that combine performance, accessibility, and mobility. In short, it wants to bring console-grade gaming out of the living room and into gamers’ backpacks.
“India has built one of the world’s largest gaming communities, but premium gaming remains inaccessible for many players. We believe it’s time to change that,” said ARC co-founder Jobin Joseph. “We want to build products that make high-quality gaming more accessible and help more Indians experience gaming beyond the smartphone.”
For Joseph and Jadhav, the idea is deeply personal. Like many Indian gamers of their generation, their early gaming memories involved borrowed consoles, crowded cyber cafés, and making the most of rare opportunities to play premium titles.
That experience shaped a conviction that Indian gamers have too often been viewed as customers to sell to rather than players to design for.
Building gaming hardware is hardly an easy mode challenge. It demands expertise across engineering, manufacturing, supply chains and product development. But ARC believes the timing is right as India’s gaming audience matures and seeks richer experiences.
“Our ambition goes beyond building a gaming device,” said Jadhav. “If India can become one of the world’s largest gaming markets, it deserves products built with Indian gamers in mind.”
The start-up is entering a fiercely competitive sector, but ARC is wagering that local insight can be a differentiator. As India’s gaming industry levels up, the company hopes its hardware will help more players graduate from touchscreens to console-quality adventures.
For ARC, the game has only just begun. The loading screen is over; now comes the hard part, pressing start.
