The Indian mobile gaming market is home to hundreds of millions of gamers, making it one of the world’s largest mobile gaming markets by downloads. This scale has long been the main figure used to describe the country’s gaming sector.
Download numbers are no longer rising. India recorded around 8.1 billion mobile game installs in 2025, down from a peak of roughly 9.4 billion in 2022. Downloads have now declined for three consecutive years, according to Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2026 report.
Revenue Keeps Rising Even as Installs Fall
Revenue has not followed the same path. In-app purchase revenue from mobile games in India grew to around $389 million in 2025, up from roughly $284 million in 2022, according to Sensor Tower’s State of Mobile 2026 report. The gap between falling installs and rising revenue points to a market shifting its focus from adding new users to extracting more value from existing ones.
Time spent on mobile games in India also dipped in 2025, falling after reaching a peak of roughly 60 billion hours in 2024, according to the same report. Players are spending less time in mobile games even as the money those games generate continues to grow.
Why Browser-Based Games Are Gaining Ground
Browser-based games do not require an app store. These games load and run directly in a web browser tab, using HTML5 and WebGL to run on desktops, tablets and mobile phones without an install. This is part of a wider shift away from hardware-dependent distribution, which also includes cloud-streamed titles and mini-games inside other apps, according to an industry analysis by Naavik.
Gamezop co-founder Yashash Agarwal told Business Standard, “Web gaming is seeing explosive traction.” He said Indian players are moving toward games that need no download and no waiting.
The Platforms Behind the Shift
Browser-based games in India generally take one of two forms. Some are embedded inside other apps and websites people already use, such as the casual games available within apps like Paytm and Tata Play. Others operate as standalone destinations that players visit directly in a browser, such as Poki, one of the world’s largest web gaming sites, with India among its largest markets by player numbers.
This shift comes alongside wider digital investment in India. In Mumbai, global capability centres have nearly tripled their share of the office market, according to a Knight Frank India report, pointing to broader technology infrastructure growth in the country.