Who is the Indian Gamer? An Obsession with Sweaty Thumbs, Hot Phones, and the Long Road to a Gaming PC
A Q&A with Spinbot boss Aamir Malik reveals some interesting details on who is playing games in India, why mobile dominates, and why PC and console gaming will never die.
While India is a mobile-first gaming market, it’s a rare few who actually know their audience. Many industry leaders are happy to obfuscate the very business they’re in with something else entirely. And then there’s SpinBot.
It’s a gaming-focussed accessories brand founded by Aamir Malik who earned his stripes at Indian peripherals heavy weight Amkette. The company recently brought on content creator Vivek ‘ClutchGod’ Horo as brand ambassador to highlight its community-first focus.
And while creator tie-ups with gaming companies are a dime-a-dozen in India (ask me how I know) I was curious in understanding how SpinBot made sense of a market that’s notoriously difficult to survive in let alone profit given how the mobile space is dominated by just two games. What followed was an insightful conversation with Malik. Some responses have been edited slightly for clarity and length.
What are the origins of SpinBot? What made you branch out into what seemed like a high-risk category at the time?
I started my career with the consumer electronics company called Amkette, also known as Evo Fox. I used to work there as a product manager, and I was working there developing the products like keyboards, mice, and mouse pads. And while I was there in 2018, I used to get a lot of queries about consumers asking for the product related to PUBG Mobile [now BGMI]. That’s when I realised that PUBG and Free Fire were gaining a lot of traction in India, but there is no particular brand who is catering to the need of mobile gamers. Mobile gaming was one category to which no big brand was looking after.
All the brands which were offering mobile gaming products were either very generic in nature or came with no warranty and very low quality standards. From that time, I decided to quit my job and start a brand that solves the problem majorly for mobile gamers.
So the biggest game at that point of time was PUBG followed by Free Fire, then Call of Duty. Being a gamer myself, I used to play PUBG a lot and faced a lot of issues, especially the problem of sweaty thumbs.
And so that’s when I decided to start my own brand and to get some products for the Indian gamers that solve their problems. So, we started with finger sleeves as the first product. We started this in 2019. We were the first to do it and it gained a lot of traction from the gaming community.
A lot of gamers and streamers organically started using our product. They liked our product, and we started engaging a lot more with the gamer community.
As we were growing, we came to know about more problems that the mobile gamers were facing, like one specific problem in the summer season—that the smartphone heats up. So we ended up being the first brand to start mobile gaming coolers in India. In 2020, we came up with our first mobile cooler called SpinBot Ice Dot.
It was received well by the gamers, and then we launched a range of mobile coolers. Then we decided to do more and more products for the mobile gamers. We came up with headphones and earphones with a dedicated gaming mode that offers low latency so that you can hear footsteps and those sounds very clearly.
It also comes with a dedicated boom mic so you get two mic functionality for your partners or colleagues to hear you clearly; we launched wired and wireless versions.
We also had with gaming triggers, so for all those gamers for whom playing six-finger claw control or four-finger claw control was not easy, using our triggers made it very casual for them.
We started with mobile gaming and later on, we switched to PC gaming accessories as well. Now we have approximately 44 SKUs and we have been selling throughout India on online platforms like Blinkit, Amazon, Flipkart, and we do have our own website.
While Spinbot started with thumb sleeves, what’s been the best-selling product so far?
So far, there are two categories which I can say have been the best sellers. One is primarily the finger sleeves. They are the best seller throughout on Amazon and Flipkart. And the mobile cooler, which is the second best category that we do, and it sells best during the season of summer. It starts from March onwards and goes up to October onwards because the Indian weather is pretty hot. We are the best seller in this category as well.
What are the challenges faced in building a mobile cooler that’s compatible for every smartphone sold in the country?
The coolers work on the Peltier effect. What happens is there is a semiconductor N-type and P-type and reverse currents. This is the type of mobile cooler that we launched in 2020. It used to cool down the smartphone’s processor by up to 15 to 20 degrees in 30 minutes of usage.
But the only thing was, since it was working on semiconductor-based technology, the power consumption was high, and it was totally based on a wired mode. Gamers wanted more with the mobile cooler, so we decided to come up with one that has an inbuilt battery.
Frankly speaking, the problem with the power bank version is that since we are adding a battery to it, the weight increases. A normal one is around 80 grams, but the wireless MagSafe version goes up to 180 grams, which can affect the gyroscope. We are still working on improving this technology to make the wireless mobile coolers lighter and last for 1.5 to 2 hours. We have tried using big batteries because the power consumption is really high, but the wired version is still the best one and sells the best.
However, there is a demand for the wireless and MagSafe version. We are working on it and probably by the mid of this year, we will move to a mobile cooler which is wireless in nature with a good battery life and a lighter weight.
Also, there is a need for a mobile cooler that can charge your smartphone while cooling it down wirelessly, which is a proper use case of MagSafe. We are working on more versions and by the middle of this year, we will come up with metal versions.
Do you have any R&D that happens in-house, or is it just a question of talking to the community and getting consumer insights?
We are a startup. The gaming community in India is still growing, and mobile gaming is still growing. Our business operates on an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) model. Our entire manufacturing is done purely in three countries: China, Vietnam, and Taiwan. We design in India; we work on the specification and the design part in India.
We understand the need of the consumer through an in-house team of approximately two people in the R&D team whose work is to make the products better. Another thing is we have a gamer community that’s directly linked to us. Approximately 150 to 200 gamers are directly in touch with us since we started five years ago. Before launching any product, they do the R&D and the testing. They give their feedback, and based on the actual gamers’ usage, we make changes and improvements to the product before manufacturing.
How have you built this community since the inception of SpinBot?
Since 2019, we have been sponsoring a lot of teams and have been the jersey sponsors for many. We have been organising many tournaments and sponsoring the prize pools. We have sponsored approximately INR 800,000 worth of prize pools from 2021 to 2025. We have sponsored teams like M4 and Jaguar Esports, which have represented in the BMPS, BMOC, the IQOO series and OnePlus campus stream.
We also have our own team which is currently a work in progress called Squadron. We regularly interact with these players who use our products in tournaments, scrims, and trials. They give us feedback on what they need next to be better gamers and what improvements they need in existing products. Our in-house team is just two persons who are hardcore gamers themselves.
Most brands who claim to be making in India are primarily assembling in India. Making in India is possible once you have a decent level of scale. Since we are a startup with a growing community, we actually cannot afford to do that yet. We definitely want to make in India, but for that, we have to robust our infrastructure and scale up first.
Who is the Indian gamer?
I primarily break the Indian gaming market down into two major segments. One is the hyper-casual gamers who play games like Ludo King and Candy Crush casually for fun with family and friends. The demographics for this segment are primarily people above the age of 30 or 35, and they spend about 40 minutes to an hour per day playing. The female demographic also contributes a lot to this user base.
The second category is competitive esports and battle Royale games. This category is growing like anything in India. The gamers in this community are in the age group of 13 to 35 years. Many people play to represent a team, some play to stream and build a live audience, and some casually play with college friends. This category is still dominated by a male audience—about 95%—with the female category being around 5% to 10%. This diversity is changing as more female teams enter esports. This segment includes students, aspiring streamers, and YouTubers who want to make esports a career.
With about 500 million players between BGMI and Free Fire in India, do you see that audience moving to PC, or is the PC audience separate?
In my opinion, the PC category is not a growing category; it’s a stable category that will be there forever. PC gaming, PlayStation, and Xbox console gaming are different scenes that will never die. But mobile gaming is a growing category. We started SpinBot because we understood this category was untapped and was going to boom as the next big thing in the gaming industry. We launched the PC gaming segment because we claim to be the “gaming culture of India”.
If you look at the life cycle of a gamer, they might start at 12 to 14 years old. Nowadays, a gaming PC costs INR 200,000 to 300,000, so they start with mobile gaming. By the time they start making money in their first job and have some savings, they move to PC gaming. They might spend five to ten years in mobile gaming first. PC or console is in the heart of every gamer. Mobile gaming is popular when playing in a peer group, but once you have your own setup, people individually start playing solo games on PC. So we cater to the needs of all gamers, but mobile gaming is still the biggest and growing segment for us, while PC is stable.
Finally, where do the majority of your sales happen? Online on your site, Amazon, Flipkart, or offline retail?
We are a purely online brand and have no offline presence. In terms of marketplaces, Amazon and Flipkart are the major contributors, accounting for 60% of our sales.
We have been listed on quick commerce platforms like Instamart and Blinkit for one year, and 15% of our sales come from there. The remaining 25% comes from our own website.