The NASSCOM Game Developer Conference (NGDC) will be held for the next three years with the support of the Government of Telangana. The NASSCOM Gaming Forum (NGF) has signed an MOU with Telengana, who will be the State Partner for NGDC for three years starting this year and thus, NGDC will now move to Hyderabad!
NASSCOM Gaming Forum, chairman and Dhruva Interactive, founder, Rajesh Rao recently announced, “We are proud to share that NASSCOM Gaming Forum will be hosting Nasscom and this is going to give a big boost to the gaming start-ups in Hyderabad.”
This year, NGDC will be held from 10 to 12 November, 2016 at Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC). This will be the 8th edition of NGDC after the last year’s edition which took place from 6 to 7 November, 2015 at Pune. In fact, till now NGDC has been hosted at Pune as it is an IT-Tech city but from now on for the next three consecutive years NGDC will move to the IT hub and tech giant Hyderabad.
Telengana has also just announced a policy for animation and games, and they are building a massive center of excellence along with top class incubation space for gaming startups.
In December 2015, the Telangana government along with Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) launched an incubation centre IMAGE (Innovation in Multimedia, Animation, Gaming and Entertainment) facility for startups, particularly in gaming and animation.
Telangana comprises of almost 20-30 gaming studios like The Awesome Game Studio and EA Mobile, animation companies like Green Gold Animation and DQ Entertainment International and VFX too has been an important part with outfits like FireFly Studios and Makuta VFX. Moreover, with the 70,000 sq.ft. start-up incubator T-Hub launched in November 2015, the AVGC industry has gained impetus to function as a major platform as the ‘source and summit’ of the AVGC industry.
This move of NGDC has come into effect probably due to the space constraints and in anyway it is beneficial for it due to the emergence of IMAGE and T-Hub in Hyderabad. This move will also facilitate the birth of more startups in the already tech oriented land and draw investments from the major players as well. The game developers can therefore foresee a bright future with potential support both from the industry and the government. Well, as far as NGDC 2016 is concerned we can expect a heap of changes as it marks its way right from Pune to Hyderabad.
