-by Jaya Pathak
The market of mobile-gaming is not acting like a nice PowerPoint chart due to which it is interesting in India. This month it is some board game your family plays between tea and dinner; next month it is a battle royale lobby wherein a million little small-town phones are performing the sort of networking activity that would turn a telecom planner into a nervous system. And beamed that lies below the sound is a prosaic reality: India installs at a terrifying rate, but monetises in a very specific, genre-biased manner. With a Sensor Tower-style-view of FY 2024-25, Fortune India estimates the installs at 8.45 billion in India and indicated how the download graphs are two different stories, as well as the revenue charts.
The top 10:
1) Free Fire MAX
Free Fire MAX is the future single face of mass-market Indian gaming, 2026. It is number one on the Similar web list of the top grossing Android game (in India) (late January 2026), so you know how efficiently it turns time spent into revenue. Around the same time, it also has the number one position in AppBrain on the list of top grossing games in India. The larger fact is more strategic, it does well because it has an intuition of Indian devices, Indian bandwidth realities and Indian impatience; shorter loops, quicker feedback and fewer barriers.
2) Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI)
BGMI still holds the market the size of a massive chunk of it, the game that people plan the evenings around and makes it serious. BGMI also ranks as the 2 nd in India in the same Similarweb top-grossing snapshot, coming right after Free Fire MAX. Being on the top-grossing ranking by AppBrain, AppBrain is ranked at the 2nd position, which is a strong indicator of non-transient monetisation, but not a spike. BGMI is no longer an actual game culturally, but rather a social gathering, groups, competitions, video clips, and a monthly stream of stories about a comeback.
3) Ludo King
The Indian downloads are the silent Emperor of Ludo King: nothing glam and nothing edgy, just omnipresent. According to Sensor Towerin, its coverage of the India-market (through Pocketgamer.biz), Ludo King is the most downloaded and a yet growing and expanding mobile game in India, with its all-time downloads numbering more than 1.25 billion. In its report, Fortune India also states that Ludo King was at the head of the download charts in India in the FY 2024-25. It continues to appear on monetisation-intensive lists it remains hanging on as high as the top grossing category (around 19 in late Jan 2026), an excellent result given that the majority of people are still thinking of a board game as a form of free time pass.
4) Candy Crush Saga
Yes, it’s still here. In a ranking of top-grossing games in India by Similarweb, Candy Crush Saga is at position 4 at the end of January 2026, the characteristic behaviour of candy crush: it does not need trends, it needs habits. It is also a reiteration that India is not a one-market wonder-shooter at the same time that puzzle games continue to rake-in since they fit perfectly into the micro-moments of the Indian market: short breaks, waiting rooms and low-commitment gaming.
5) Coin Master
The ability to remain relevant is nearly annoying in Coin Master, and the statistics support it. Non-games Coin Master is ranked highly in the top-grossing games in India by Similarweb as of the end of January 2026, at position 3. Fortune India also flaunts Coin Master as one of the world hits that have been showing top positions in the Indian charts. It is the type of a product that causes business people to nod: simple core loop, unrelenting events, and monetisation which does not demand an esports ecosystem.
6) Roblox
The other way of putting it is that Roblox is what occurs when a game is turned into a platform and then secretly begins to act like social infrastructure. In India (late January 2026), Similarweb ranks Roblox at number 5 in terms of gross income games. It might be that the actual rival of Roblox is not another game; it is time, You Tube hours, scrolling hours, all that is taking up the schedule of an adolescent.
7) Clash of Clans
Clash of Clans has the longevity many new launches would die to have and continues to appear anytime there is money on the table. At some point around the end of January 2026, similarweb ranks Clash of Clans at position 13 on its list of India top-grossing apps. Fortune India also notes that Clash of Clans is one of the hits in India that is ranked as one of the global hits. It is not necessarily the game that everyone is shouting at the same time, but one time-tested “spender” ecosystem – players who will approach progress as an investment.
8) Call of Duty: Mobile
CODM possesses a particular ability to be a premium but not inaccessible. The list on Similarweb indicates that Call of Duty: Mobile ranks among the most profitable sets in India (approximately 17, at the end of January 2026). It ranks just a little below the two undeniable industry leaders in raw commercial strength, but enjoys a stable brand and a playing experience that is a slight bit more snappy than most of the competition.
9) Mobile eFootball / EA SPORTS FC Mobile
Progress in sports games in India is pretty practical: it does not require a console, or it does not require a stadium, and one can feel that he is being part of the sport. India According to the India list of the best-grossing insurance deals, efootball is in 6 th place and EA SPORTS FC Mobile occupies number 9 in the list at the end of January 2026. The business source is clear: with the simplification of payments and increased speed of content elements, sports IP on mobile is a stable monetisation channel – not as risky as battle royale, not so niche-focused as hardcore strategy.
10) Cricket League (and a general wave of cricket-games)
The opportunities of cricket gaming are created almost unfairly favourably in India: the crowd is already ready-made. The snapshot of Fortune India FY 2024-25 considers the Cricket League as one of the leading downloads in the Indian charts. Cricket League is further down the list (covering circa place #46) on the list of the highest grossing companies on the Similarweb chart, and this is, in a sense, a helpful story: it is not necessarily that a huge presence equates to the highest level of revenue, but it is that a huge presence is a sign of cultural permanence.
What this conglomeration really tells us about India
To begin with, India is not a single market, but a number of markets piled one atop the other. The country in which a board game such as Ludo King becomes a downloads giant also does the same to battle royales which are the revenue kings: it is already Free Fire and BGMI that take the top spot by the revenue cameel, and they are considered to be of the shooter genre. That breach is significant to any one who builds or invests: you can build your business by making installs or you can build it by building in high-spending niche, but you cannot do both.
Second, trending in India is not that new, but rather more of relevancy retention. The only title that survives here is one that honors the fundamentals, such as the range of the device, the cost of data, the duration of the session, but does not leave one with no reason to come back the next day. That is the reason why elder megachurches such as Candy Crush and Clash of Clans are never going to die, and why platform-based experiences such as Roblox continue to expand their reach.
And last but not least, when it comes to the next shift, I would place a bet that it would not be just one game breakout. It will be a shift in the focus of attention: more community-based play, more developer economies in games, and more mid-core games that will monetise without requiring Indians to act like Americans or Koreans. They also have their own throb of gamers in the country, impatient, social, and value-conscious, and sometimes even obsessive. The 2026 winners are already aware of that. Its next winners will respect it even more.
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