Female streamers are carving their space as game streaming industry grows in India

In India's growing online gaming market, women have a fair share with females constituting 43 percent of the mobile gaming audience in the country.

Along with playing online, more Indian women are also streaming games, making game streaming a strong vertical of the online gaming industry.

While the game streaming market in India is at a nascent stage, it is expected to see a strong uptick in the next two years.

Streaming success

Piyush Kumar, CEO, Rooter, a game streaming platform, drew parallels with China and explained the estimated size of the game streaming market in India.

"The game streaming industry which in a market like China was introduced when the online gaming market was about USD 13 to USD 14 billion. Within two and a half years, the gaming market grew to be almost USD 35 billion, while the revenue from game streaming went up to $3.5 billion. So, it became 10 percent of the overall gaming market. This is similar to the way growth of game streaming is likely to happen in India with game streaming estimated to be between 10 to 15 percent of the overall gaming market."

He said that the overall gaming market in India is expected to generate USD three to four billion by 2023 and revenue coming from game streaming would be around USD 300-400 million.

And in this growing vertical, women are carving their space.

Females fairing well in streaming

A YouTube official noted, "Traditionally male-dominated verticals such as gaming are now seeing more and more women creators gaining popularity in the last few years. These women creators are breaking barriers, driving social impact, taking to unconventional verticals, and creating diverse content."

The official pointed out female creators like Ankkita C who has 237,000 subscribers on YouTube, Xyaa with 266,000 subscribers, Meow16K with 45.1 thousand subscribers who is a pro gamer on YouTube, Manasvi with 57.5 thousand subscribers, Suhani Shah with 941,000 subscribers are examples of this shift.

Game streamer Paridhi Jain who in the gaming world is known as Curlbury said that introduction of games like Valorant and BGMI has opened up various opportunities in the gaming industry for female streamers as a plethora of organisations pay good salaries to content creators.

"So, now we can opt for this (game streaming) as our full-time job," said Jain who has over 60,000 followers on YouTube and 2.7,000 followers on YouTube.

While YouTube is the biggest platform for game streaming in India, other platforms that have come up in the last one year include Rooter, Loco, and Doofy.

Jain added that while in the West the gaming market is mature because of which the number of female streamers are high, in India it’s still in a developing phase. "So, I’m expecting to see the number of female streamers grow by a strong rate in near future."

Kumar pointed out that when Rooter had started in the game streaming category the platform saw a lot of male streamers as a lot of interests were around them.

"But lately what we realized is that a lot of females are playing online games particularly the first-person shooter games," he added.

The company has also onboarded over 100 female game streamers in the last four months.

Sonam Rathi who is known as Delhi ki Parii noted that competition has increased amid female game streamers with more women streaming the games they play. Rathi who plays Free Fire, GTA, streams content for around three to four hours a day.

Another female game streamer Neha Sottany who streams Valorant said that as there aren't many female streamers streaming the game they get more views. But she added that more female streamers are joining the game.

"We've seen behavior changing in the online gaming space quite a bit over the last six to 10 months. A lot of women are now getting into game streaming. The creator economy is picking up and because of this a lot of female creators are picking up different genres and gaming is coming up as the biggest one," said Kumar.

He said that female game streamers attract more viewership because their gameplay is very different and the way they interact with the audience is very different.

Better content monetisation

With strong viewership, female streamers are also able to monetise their content better.

Game streamer Anshi Tiwari who has 15.4 thousand followers on YouTube and 10.4 thousand on Rooter said that she earns around Rs 20,000 to 30,000 per month through game streaming.

Rathi added that her earnings through game streaming have increased from Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 currently per month.

Kumar noted that 4.3 percent of people who are creating content on Rooter are getting paid. And out of that percentage of female streamers getting paid is higher.

"This means females have a very strong propensity to get paid if they pick streaming as a career," he said.

More Indian females will stream games

And Kumar believes more females in India will opt for game streaming as people are picking up mobile gaming.

In fact, out of the 400 million online gamers 90 percent consider mobile phones as their preferred gaming device, according to industry estimates.

"Adoption of females doing streaming on mobile gaming is much better. With mobile gaming now spearheading the gaming industry, we will see many more female streamers and many more female esports athletes coming out of the gaming space," added Kumar.