India’s gaming industry has expanded rapidly over the past decade, yet a true commercial breakthrough remains elusive. Outside of Real Money Games, no Indian studio has released a title generating $5 million in annual recurring revenue in the last five years, despite a surge in indie talent. For Anurag Choudhary, founder of Felicity Games, the issue isn’t a lack of creativity—it’s a lack of optimization.
Choudhary entered the gaming industry about a year and a half ago, an outsider to the space. A veteran of leadership roles at Snapdeal and Swiggy, he had also launched Wakao, a short-video platform that saw strong user numbers but struggled to monetize, forcing him to return investor funds. “From that experience, I learned a lot about user acquisition and performance marketing, both critical to the mobile casual gaming space today,” he said in an exclusive interview with AFK Gaming.
Now, with Felicity, a mobile gaming publisher, Choudhary is applying lessons from performance marketing to a market that’s fundamentally different from just a few years ago. “The mobile gaming landscape today is fundamentally different from 2019. Back then, strong products could rely on organic growth,” he said. “Today, you must invest in acquiring users. The paradigm has shifted—distribution now requires money, and achieving profitability on CAC-to-LTV (Customer Acquisition Cost to Lifetime Value) is more of a science than ever before.”
