Unable to match the capex spends of rivals Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, loss-making Vodafone Idea is betting on partnerships to increase its average revenue per user (Arpu). The company, which has tie-ups with several leading over-the-top (OTT) platforms, on Monday marked its foray into the online gaming market through a partnership with Nazara Technologies.

Gaming is turning out to be a strong use case for mobile operators as it has high growth potential and can be monetised easily. As per estimates, there are around 433 million mobile gamers in the country and the number is expected to cross 650 million by 2025.

Reliance already has a JioGames platform, open for both Jio and non-Jio users. Bharti Airtel is also trying to tap the gaming opportunity. Airtel had last year demonstrated a cloud-gaming session in a 5G environment.

Globally, in terms of app spends, gaming accounted for 68% of consumer spending in mobile apps in 2021. Gaming is quite popular for Indian smartphone users, accounting for 15% of smartphone time.

Vodafone Idea’s entry into gaming will allow its customers to access over 1,200 titles across 10 genres. The company is offering Vi games in three categories – free, gold pass and platinum. The gold pass will offer 30 games for Rs 50 (postpaid) and Rs 56 (prepaid) with a validity of 30 days, while platinum games will be available on pay per download for Rs 25 for postpaid and Rs 26 for prepaid. Apart from this, around 250 free games will be available on the platform.

“We are seeing a significant uptake of gaming consumption in India with more than 95% of gaming enthusiasts using the mobile device to enjoy a wide variety of content. We see gaming as a major focus area of our digital content strategy and we intend to build a comprehensive play encompassing most facets of gaming,” Avneesh Khosla, chief marketing officer of Vodafone Idea, said.

The company said gaming fits well in its strategic roadmap to scale up proportion of high Arpu customers, dive digital adoption and monetisation. The company, however, did not share what kind of jump in Arpu it is expecting through gaming.

Vodafone Idea has the lowest Arpu of Rs 115 among the mobile operators. In terms of capex spends, Vodafone Idea invested around Rs 3,290 crore during the nine months of the current fiscal compared with Rs 11,980 crore for Airtel. Though the company has announced that its promoters would infuse Rs 4,500 crore into the company, analysts feel the amount is minuscule when compared with the requirements of the company. Further, Vodafone Idea would also find it difficult to reverse the loss of subscribers as it will remain behind Jio and Airtel in terms of pan-India network capabilities and service offerings like providing subsidised devices. Both Airtel and Jio are giving lucrative offers to customers on devices.