Googly: The Ultimate Multi-Gaming Platform for Indian Gamers

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the gaming industry in India experienced a significant boost. As per India Times, over 24 million Indians joined the payment-linked gaming market during the lockdown period. The Indian gaming sector's growth was recorded at $2.8 billion in 2022 and is expected to reach $5 billion by 2025, with a CAGR of about 30%. Additionally, the number of individual gamers in India is predicted to rise from 420 million in 2022 to 500 million by 2025. In light of this potential, Shubhodip Pal founded Googly in 2021. The multi-gaming platform features over 150 different casual games and about 50 e-sports games, providing gamers in India with an opportunity to join and build a community, learn, play and teach various online games.

Googly CEO and founder, Pal, stated that it is not easy to find a hardcore gaming community in India since the community is dispersed and connects over various different platforms. Therefore, they aimed to provide gamers with a single platform where they can find all aspects of the gaming community. Subscribers to the platform can connect with and play with others of the same skill level, levelling the playing field and providing fair opportunities for all players to improve and showcase their skills.

Googly allows individual players to create tournaments of any chosen game with almost complete control over the rules. Once the match ends, the winning amount is converted into real-time money and credited to the player's account. Additionally, players who excel at a particular game can become coaches after completing specific internal processes. They can decide the fee and the timings to coach other players.

Googly's Head of Product, Sumit Sharma, explained that the platform is subscription-based, with the first 30 days as a free trial. Since the platform has gamers of all ages, parental consent is required for specific age groups. For those within these age groups, the parents are provided with access to limit screen time and oversee the expenses and income in the account.

While Googly doesn't provide game streaming as part of its offerings, it competes with other companies such as Loco and Rooter in the broader sense. In terms of casual games and esports, it competes with Paytm First Games, Dream11, MPL Games, etc. Currently, the platform focuses on the Indian community and is available across the country, except for states facing a ban or restrictions on online games. Googly concentrates on providing its users games of skill while leaving out games of chance and laws concerning them. The mobile gaming industry in India has expanded at a CAGR of 38%, compared to 8% in China and 10% in the US, and is estimated to reach $5 billion by 2025.