Our aim now is to create Indian games for local use and global exports: Krafton CEO Kim

Five years after entering India with a single offering PUBG, Korean video game publisher, Krafton Inc, is keen to double down its market dominance by diversifying its product offerings with fresh games, hone home grown game developer talent and bulk up its investments in studios and consumer internet companies to create an ecosystem in Asia's third-largest economy. India for long has been considered as one of the last remaining unexplored markets for the $500 billion global gaming industry.

Earlier in the week, Krafton along with Korean asset manager Mirae Asset and Naver launched a Rs 6,000 crore technology-focused fund to back early-growth-stage technology startups. “India has very good human resources as well as cultural resources when it comes to creating content,” said CH Kim, chief executive of Krafton Inc during an exclusive interaction with ET during his visit to the country as part of the business delegation with the visiting South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. “We want games to be created in India to cater to Indian users. But we also want games made in India to be exported outside, so it can become a global phenomenon. We're trying to develop this type of game development capabilities on ground so homegrown Indian games can be produced.

The company has incubated 14 local studios across 3 cohorts to develop the next level of developers. “Gaming itself is basically software business. India is known to have a lot of good software engineers. The only missing part has been India's lack of history for the sort of the good senior talent who can lead the development of good quality games. But with global players like us coming to India we can gradually expand the talent pool,” added Kim.


Krafton, has already invested $250 million backing social media, content creation startups, media platforms, payment gateways like Kuku FM, Pratilipi Frnd, Cashfree as well as game development studios like Lila Games and Esports companies like Nodwin. Outside of the new fund, it plans to annually continue to invest $50 million (approx. $150-$200 million in next 2-3 years) from its own balance sheet.

“If we invest in startups who have overlapping user base, potentially we could collaborate with them to bringing new business models and even focus on cross marketing and collaborations. In payment, for example in the long run, maybe payment will happen not just through App Store but also through direct payment through apps which will benefit them and also will give us some advantage as an investor in them,” said Sohn, CEO Krafton India. It is also a sponsor of several specialised gaming funds like IMM India Fund, Lumikai, 3one4 Capital, and VentureSouq to helping channel South Korean and global capital into high-potential Indian startups in gaming, media, and deep tech. These funds enable Krafton to back multiple early-stage companies and expand its influence across adjacent digital sectors.

The mobile version of Krafton’s flagship game PUBG has been blocked in India but it launched Battlegrounds Mobile India, an India specific online multiplayer battle royale game in 2021 which has since gone on to become one of the most popular games with 260 million registered users and has consistently ranked among the top three revenue-generating games in India over the past five years. But the company has also branched out to offer a wider portfolio of titles such as Bullet Echo India, Road To Valor: Empires, CookieRun India, and Real Cricket, catering to a wide spectrum of Indian gamers. For BGMI India, which has Maharastra as the largest market, the management is aiming to increase its presence in the southern states.

It acquired Real Cricket after taking control of Nautilus Games in 2025 to derisk from its overwhelming reliance on the Battle Royale genre, its biggest money spinner so far. “Our next target is what is going to be a genre that is not Battle Royale that will appeal to Indian users? What is the next fresh experience that will excite them? And we think cricket could be an answer to that. We're servicing the Real Cricket, making it better, so to kind of scope out what would be the next exciting thing to offer Indian gamers,” said Kim.

Krafton has also been reported to be in discussions to be a co-investor in an IPL franchise – a first of its kind move anywhere in the world – but the management did not want to comment on the subject, as yet.

The company does not disclose region wise sales figures but it is estimated India closed CY25 with sales of $350-$400 million and turned profitable.

Industry watchers feel like several of their game publishing peers like Take Two or Behaviour Interactive, Krafton too is becoming over-reliant on one genre and game. “Game developers and studios need to be audacious and have deep pockets to interpret the various data signals and forecast efficiently,” said Neil Haldar of Haldar & Co, a Las Vegas based capital advisory consultant for the gaming and content industry. “Krafton too has been having difficulty in birthing newer games. Subnautica 2 has been their big bet but it has been mired in legal controversies.”

For example, 20,000 new games were launched on Stream, an online PC games store in the US. But 50% of them have registered sales of less than 500 units. Krafton has 31 products listed on the platform and new games like inZOI have already clocked sales of $52.5 million, according to data from gamediscover.co. This is far superior to Pizza Bandits or Toy Clash some of Krafton’s newer launches. Even an older game Natural Selections II, launched pre PUBG vintage, had $6.7 million sales.

Kim however disagrees saying the main experimentation of the IP happens by injecting new types of experiences and fun factors within the PUBG PC experience which is their key growth driver. “If you look at the PUBG PC version, both the revenue and the user base has grown quite significantly over the years.” The real question, according to him, is “are we actively providing new experiences to the existing Battle Royale user base, to innovate and provide fresh experiences? We are doing that currently with PUBG, and we hope to do so the same way for BGMI as well.”

The company has rolled out the PUBG PC version called Xeno Point, and this has led to the peak concurrency reaching 1million users for the first time since 2018.

India is important for the company as their home base Korea – is already the 4th largest gaming market –- and is over indexed. “But India is not even close to top 10. So, we believe India gaming industry deserves to be much bigger than the current size. We are betting on the very long term, not just on the like one game or two game or the betterment of 1 or 2 genres but to ensure the gaming industry here grows 3X- 5X in the next 5 years,” added Sohn.