Ludo King surpassing a billion downloads worldwide was no accident. Gametion’s family-friendly board game adaptation has risen to new heights of popularity through a set of carefully crafted product strategies that have captured the hearts of Indian mobile gamers. 

Ludo King is the most downloaded game in India through the first three quarters of 2024 and is fourth in terms of active users. It has also done well in Indonesia, which delivers 6% of downloads and 10% of revenue. India is the primary market, though, with nearly 80% of downloads and over 40% of net revenue.

Despite its large volume of players, Ludo King lags in terms of IAP monetization and only ranks among the top 40 highest revenue-generating mobile games in India. In the board game subcategory, Ludo King is among the top four revenue-generating games in India in the first three quarters of 2024, but it is being outstripped by competitor Yalla Ludo.

All that said, Ludo King seems to have cracked the Indian game market. So let’s dig into why it’s winning, how it could perform even better, and what other teams can learn from it.

How Ludo King is Winning in India

Popularity of Ludo

Ludo is an extremely popular board game in the Indian subcontinent, and has been enjoyed by children and adults alike for centuries. Such strong brand recognition is a huge advantage in today’s UA environment, as is evident in the sheer number of organic downloads for Ludo King, which was higher than inorganic downloads in the first half of 2024.

It is also worth noting that four out of the top 10 grossing tabletop games in India were Ludo-based games. Ludo King plays to its audience well and has taken great care to faithfully translate the game onto mobile — Indian players get exactly what they have known and loved their entire lives, only in digital form. Interest in Ludo has also been growing in recent years.

Simple, Quick Gameplay

Gametion has managed to further simplify the core gameplay of Ludo with one-click die cast and quicker gameplay. In Quick Ludo mode, a match takes only five minutes, while a traditional Ludo board game could last anywhere between 30-90 minutes. This also lends itself well to the playing styles of Indian mobile gamers, and the game UI is also very clean and simple, allowing players to easily pick it up and play.

Social Connection

In board game form, Ludo is inherently a social multiplayer game for 2-4 players. But Ludo King has multiplayer modes that support up to six players, and like most social mobile games, players can also connect with their friends through social media.

Social features play a very important part in India’s mobile gaming ecosystem. Open voice chat was one of the primary reasons mobile shooters like PUBG Mobile (now Battlegrounds Mobile India) and Garena Free Fire gained popularity in India, as friends and family connected through the chat functionality.

Gametion understands this nuance of the Indian market extremely well. Ludo King’s social features include text, voice chat, and audio modes that are actually monetized; Gametion’s positioning of these social features are almost akin to premium features in social dating apps. Ludo King also offers IAP packs for unlocking peer-to-peer chats, sending voice notes in different languages and accents, and even monetizes its voice chat feature like a cellphone network connection.

Ad Monetization

Despite Ludo King’s impressive user base, its reported IAP revenue lags behind competitors. This is due to its focus on ad revenue. It is heavily ad-monetized with multiple opportunities for players to watch rewarded video ads, and the ad monetization systems are very player-friendly, allowing users to watch a large number of ads to win items and earn cosmetics.

Ads may just be Gametion’s primary business model, as the company continues to focus on ad tech improvements to drive higher ad ARPDAUs and CPMs. IAP conversion rates and ARPDAUs are low in India, so ad monetization should be an essential part of any casual mobile game’s strategy in that market.

Regionalized IAP Monetization System

Despite its social monetization systems, Ludo King is still only ranked No. 12 in terms of IAP revenue in India. Clearly, the game prioritizes engagement over monetization, because most of its revenue is driven by ads.

However, Gametion’s IAP monetization strategy is still quite successful in India and Indonesia, and that is primarily due to the conversion-focused approach.

Ludo King sells its smallest IAP pack in India for 9 INR ($0.11). In Indonesia, the same pack is priced at 3 IDR ($0.19). In contrast, its smallest IAP pack in the U.S. is priced at $1.19. Such extreme subdollar pricing in the Indian and Indonesian markets has significantly improved Ludo King’s conversion rate — according to Gametion, the below-10 INR pack led to a 1,000-fold increase in new buyer conversion.

These are important learnings for games trying to make it big in emerging APAC markets: Publishers need to offer very low-cost starter packs and subdollar IAPs.

Localization and Culturalization

Ludo King owes its success in India to deep culturalization. What many publishers get wrong about India is that the country is not a monolithic market. With over 1.4B people, India is a melting pot of diverse cultures and regional identities.

It has 22 official languages and 121 recognized languages, so Indian localization needs to go beyond support for just Hindi, one of its national languages. Ludo King is available in multiple regional Indian languages to capture the diverse audiences across the country, and it also runs culturalized live ops during local seasonal and cultural festivals such as Diwali and Christmas.

Concluding Thoughts

Can Ludo King’s success in India be replicated by global publishers? The answer is yes. We have already seen mobile games like Battlegrounds Mobile India, Garena Free Fire, and Candy Crush achieve similar success in this market.

One key to success in India is recognizing the unique characteristics of Indian players and serving their needs. Players in India have a natural affinity for deep social features, so games there go viral quickly, and the scale the market offers generates immense potential for games to make it big. It is a hard audience to monetize, but Indian players respond well to ad monetization, specifically rewarded videos, as well as conversion-focused IAP programs.

Before launching a game in India, publishers must pay close attention to the market, conduct user research, and account for cultural nuances. With the Indian game market poised to surpass $1B in revenue by 2025 and growing at double-digit CAGR, the rewards are well worth the effort.

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