Exclusive Interview with Arun Rajappa, Riot Games Country Manager for India & South Asia

India’s mobile-first esports market is immense, with a range of mobile titles huge in the country. Simultaneously, more and more consumers are starting their PC gaming journeys as the region’s economy grows. Hotspawn was offered the opportunity to interview Riot Games’ Country Manager for India and South Asia, Arun Rajappa, to discuss the company’s vision in the region and how they navigate its unique market.

Hotspawn: Firstly, would you mind explaining what your role is within Riot? What does your day-to-day look like?

Rajappa: Riot’s India office is a publishing office. So we are really focused at how do we bring the games that Riot is famous for, League of Legends, VALORANT, TFT, and the other games, how do you bring those to players in the region in a way that really celebrates players. Riot is kind of known for an approach to sort of being very player-focused and being very focused on the player experience in the community, and so we just want to bring that energy and that kind of joy of gaming to players in the region.

Just to contrast it, I think many times you’ll find that gamers in India aren’t very well served in the sense that they’re part of a global game, but there’s nothing that’s local that they can relate to. That’s there’s nothing that’s sort of very relevant to the day-to-day, right? And so I think that’s where our office comes in.

I think over the last few years we’ve assembled a really strong team of people like Fatema (Fatema Merchant, Influencer Manager for India and South Asia), who’s focused on influencer management and others on the team who are just living and breathing: “How do we bring that player experience to life?”

That’s really the one-liner, which is: “How do we give players the best experience they can have with our games?”

Lee Jones: In terms of getting new players into Riot titles, League of Legends feels like the one that gets more difficult as time goes on, particularly with the ever-increasing number of champions. There’s also not a dedicated server for players to use in the region.

Do you feel like that is one of the more difficult titles? What’s the strategy there?

Rajappa: Let me say three or four things around that. I think one — League as a MOBA is kind of the OG game for Riot. Even though I think the number of players in India aren’t that many, I think the people who play League anywhere in the world, including India, really love the game. So what we find, even in India, is that it’s a small community, but it’s a very deep community. It’s people who’ve been playing the game for the last 10 years. And we haven’t been around in India that long, so the fact is that when we serve those players through our publishing initiatives, they are very just happy to happy to see that Riot is engaging and Riot is connecting and we are doing something for the players in India.

I haven’t been in Riot for a long time, but connecting with senior leaders in Riot and understanding the ethos of the company — I think even back when the company started, it was all about: “Hey, the revenue will come, the players will come, but let’s just make core players lives much better”. And so even if it’s like thousands of players in India, it’s good to serve them deeply.

Beyond that, I think MOBA itself is a genre that’s tough. I think in India, maybe 5-7 years ago we saw some successes on mobile, not for Riot, but in general on mobile. And as you said, the number of champions are increasing. I think some of the good things, though, is that Riot itself, at a global level, is investing in ‘how do we make League of forever game’? And so this includes things like improving ARAM. And so we’re seeing that,even in India, a lot of the focus is on ARAM, which is just very easy to get into and start to play. Arcane has been a huge success. I think a lot of the fanbase for Arcane in India as well that we see.

So I think it’s a game that we’re trying to make approachable for new players through game modes like ARAM, and I think our continued investments that you’ll see over the next few years as well. Because India is not that unique in that sense where, even in other regions, you have this thing of ‘how do we bring in new players in?’ So I think we are focused on that as a company.

To your point about the server, we don’t have a server in India. We have had a server consolidation in Singapore and the Southeast Asia region, and the good news is the ping isn’t bad — it’s now maybe 40 ping from Mumbai, which is very playable. So I think from a game experience, it’s definitely I think very playable.

Lee Jones: Global Esports is next set to compete in VCT Pacific Stage 2. They’ve had Indian players on their roster in the past..

For the popularity of VALORANT in India, how significant is it to have Global Esports as a Tier 1 VCT team from the country? 

Rajappa: I think Global Esports has represented VALORANT in South Asia really well. And it’s something that people are so excited to see, that team from India is representing. I think that’s really important for players. VCSA has also been very good, and to see that we have a tournament at the South Asia level that we can compete in has been very good. I think the Global Esports journey has been fantastic. Some of the players in that team have huge fandom.

When it comes to publishing strategy, how much of a push and pull is there between trying to adapt to market trends and trying — as a huge developer like Riot — to be the trend setter?

Rajappa: Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s almost like: “How do we localise while staying true to the brand is?”. And I think over the last two years, we’ve developed great clarity around that. It’s really simple in many ways, which is I think, the brand comes first — and it’s a global brand. It’s a very well-recognised brand with a strong story, specifically for VALORANT and also for League, and we want to stay very true to that.

That said, from a local player standpoint, the kind of initiatives we do around content creators, the kind of content we have on social media, community tournaments, or connecting with colleges, those are extremely localised. So I think we want to celebrate our global brand and yet make it relevant, accessible — something that you connect to from a sort of emotional level at the local region. So I think of it as: ‘we have the brand and then we have the local secret sauce on top’. It’s worked very well.

Lee Jones: In terms of upcoming titles, 2XKO is expected to be released this year. In terms of video game genres, while fighting games still have a huge community, they feel like a bit more of an ‘old-school’ type of game.

With gaming in India being a bit more of a newer market, what are the expectations for a game like 2XKO? What are your plans around that?

Rajappa: The way I frame it is when we are bringing the new title to the market, we want to make sure that enough players who are enjoying and playing the game that we can serve. So I think it goes back to delivering a great player experience. Launching a game and then not being present or launching a game and there being huge, huge wait times to find a match or huge latencies — we wouldn’t launch the game, to put it very simply.

So I think the primary lens through which we see this is, can we deliver a great player experience right now coming to 2XKO? The fighting game community in India is small, but I hope to connect more deeply with them over the next year. Also there is the thing of the console version and like, how many people are there on the latest console.

I think it’s going to be a very thoughtful and considered approach, where if you are able to find that there are enough players that we can serve deeply and well, then we will launch. So it’s not going to be about the money or the scale, that’s not the way Riot has looked at this thing in the past. It’s really been about the player community. So I think that’s going to be the clear primary focus, and then we’ll see how it goes.