Starting that his company’s growth plans were in line, Mr. Nipin P N CEO of NipsApp Game Studios said the strategy was to double the volume in India within five years.

Despite regulatory headwinds including the Online Gaming Bill and the 28 per cent GST on gaming deposits impacting the sector this year, NipsApp Game Studios Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Nipin P N expressed confidence that Indian game development companies would keep their investments intact to cater to both domestic and international markets.

“It is still early days. We are only seeing the initial signs of how the regulations will fully play out. There are some concerns on the GST side but we will have to see whether that stabilises. I think the domestic market in India for our customers is large enough. So the investments will continue here in India because primarily they want to service the Indian market and also become stronger co-development partners globally,” Mr. Nipin said in an interview.

“There may be some impact on margins, there may be some slowdown in certain segments but we will have to see. It is still too early,” he pointed out.

To double revenue in five years

Starting that his company’s growth plans were in line, Mr. Nipin said the strategy was to double the volume in India within five years.

Further elaborating on this, he said that as the world becomes more complex with new technologies, the company was looking for growth across different industries and across different geographies and India was one of the key markets.

“There are a couple of areas that are really sticking out. One of which is immersive technologies, VR/AR and on-device AI for gaming. These are all the industries that are really growing fast,” Mr. Nipin said.

“You don’t find many countries nowadays that are growing at this pace in gaming and AVGC-XR. Our markets tend to grow faster. The infrastructure and talent that is needed has to be even higher than that to build all of this up,” he added.

Emphasising that usually some economies go sideways, some go down while some go up, he said: “In India, everything is going up, up, up and up. Yes, we want to double down.”

“I always want to double. I want to double our volume in India. The only question is, I always have to do this way. More than five years is not acceptable. That is the conversation… is it three years, four years or five years? Certainly not more,” Mr. Nipin said.

Stating that India has the growth potential, he said: “We don’t see any signs of stopping it. We see that India is so open as an economy. I marvel at your diplomacy and being able to have right relationships with so many different parts of the world. Also, that exemplifies itself in all the policies that you have.”

“It is a very supportive environment for technology and gaming now. Now, you have that with the AVGC-XR policies in multiple states, which we are super happy about, which is fantastic. Therefore, I think you [India] are taking all the right steps in order to propel that economic engine going forward,” he pointed out.

On-device AI not ‘crashing’

Amidst growing concern on overheating of technology stocks as well as disproportionate investments going into Artificial Intelligence (AI), Mr. Nipin, who has led multiple LLM-powered immersive projects, dispelled fears saying that “it’s not crashing”.

“I hope it’s not crashing. I hope that this is finding its own way, but one could argue, of course, that there’s a race, and there’s a race between people that are all very strong, and that, of course, they want to win,” Mr. Nipin said in the interview.

“So maybe it’s not always the rationale, but we don’t know,” he emphasised.

Stating that a lot of use of AI may not be as useful in the beginning, he said the “faster we deploy this in gaming and simulations, the less the risk of it.”

In anticipation of AI demand outstripping capacity, tech giants like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google have committed massive investments. “These are huge numbers by any shape or form, so there is no question. Potentially the way we look at it is, we want to bring AI into gaming and enterprise simulations. The faster time to market, better quality, better productivity, all of it,” he added.

“The fastest way to de-risk this whole thing is to have AI applications that deliver true business impact and value. That is where we need to get to,” Mr. Nipin said.

Though there is conversation on spaces where AI demand could surpass supply, Mr. Nipin said he believes that “demand will sustain itself only if it delivers true tangible business value, because then you are ready to pay.”

“What we know for sure is that every company today is spending more on AI than they used to, in terms of also IT costs. And this might be right, because if we think that AI is the future and NPC agents are like your human workers, then I think you will see a shift in the P&L from labour expenses into IT expenses naturally,” he pointed out.

“It’s not one for one, but obviously to some extent. And so therefore, I think an elevated IT line in your P&L is working, but for that you need to see the productivity. And that’s still out there,” he concluded.