As online gaming carves out a distinct industry identity, India’s gaming sector has surged to a valuation of Rs 23,000 crore (US $2.8 billion) in 2023, growing at a brisk 20% CAGR and expected to touch Rs 70,000 crore (US $8.6 billion) by 2027. A major driver within this is the skill-based gaming segment, which alone was worth Rs 33,000 crore in 2023 and is poised to double to Rs 66,000 crore by 2028, expanding at 14.5% CAGR. Fueling this momentum is India’s rich pool of tech talent. According to a study by the E-Gaming Federation and the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, 73–84% of tech students and professionals see skill gaming as a viable career path, and 68% believe it boosts their skillsets.
In a fascinating conversation with Nitin Nahata, CHRO at Gameskraft, we dug into what fuels their hiring engine. Is it a passion for gaming, sharp problem-solving skills, or sheer drive? Nitin shared how Gameskraft is shifting away from lateral hiring by building fresh talent pipelines. The company actively recruits from top campuses, including the IITs and BITS Pilani, for roles in tech, product, and design.
And above all, he believes that Gaming in India is no longer a niche.
Q/Gaming as a career choice is still niche. How do you position Gameskraft as an ‘Employer of Choice’ among top engineering talent?
Gaming in India is at a fascinating inflection point. It is no longer just a niche, but a rapidly growing industry with massive potential. Yet, we recognise that for most young professionals, the sector still feels new and unfamiliar. That’s exactly why we believe it’s our responsibility, as industry leaders, to guide early talent with the right insights, help them make informed choices, and open their eyes to the kind of career they can build here. It is designed to show young minds how the world of gaming offers unparalleled complexity, scale, and innovation – marrying systems thinking, behavioural science, and real-time architecture in ways few other industries do.
Our proposition is simple: make real impact from Day 1. We’ve built a culture where early talent gets to work on meaningful, high-stakes problems – with ownership, speed, and the chance to craft products for millions of players.
In our 2025 hiring cycle, we extended 50+ offers across Tech, Product, and Design roles, after engaging with 12 top campuses including IIT Guwahati, BITS Pilani, NID, IIIT Allahabad, and NSUT.
We are selective because we hold a high bar, and in return, we promise a workplace where talent is not just welcomed but accelerated.
Gaming is the next big thing, and India has only just scratched the surface. At Gameskraft, we are proud to give early talent the head start they deserve in a sector that’s just getting started.
Q/ How do you assess passion for gaming or game-tech in a technical hire without making it a mandatory filter?
At Gameskraft, we have consciously chosen not to reduce talent evaluation to a single trait like ‘passion for gaming.’ While that passion can be a great bonus, what matters more to us is whether someone has the flair, curiosity, and intent to make a meaningful impact in this sector. That belief is reflected in how we shape our entire narrative to candidates – we don’t just ask them to fit into the gaming world; we invite them to build it with us.
Hence, instead of looking for pre-existing knowledge of game-tech, we focus on core intrinsics like strong problem-solving ability, learning agility, and a hunger to grow. Our “Bar Raiser” rounds specifically look for long-term potential, evaluating how candidates think, adapt, and align with our culture of ownership and velocity.
We see it as our responsibility to make high-potential talent industry-ready. That’s why Generation-G places equal emphasis on onboarding, real-time coaching, and cultural immersion. We aren’t just hiring for today – we’re building a talent base that can shape the future of gaming in India!
Q3. In a selective hiring model like yours, how do you ensure that every hire scales impact, not just headcount?
When we step in a campus, we’re not just filling roles; we’re looking for that unmistakable spark – a combination of potential, intent, and clarity of thought. If the right foundation exists, our Generation-G program is built to shape that into high-impact careers.
We’ve seen that a fresher’s impact trajectory isn’t defined by pedigree – it’s shaped by how they think, how quickly they learn, and how well they respond to feedback. These are the signals we focus on during our hiring process.
Every role, whether in full-stack, backend, frontend, design, or product, follows a rigorously defined forecasting & recruitment model. This ensures that we map each hire to a real business need. It also allows us to be precise in how we align talent with challenges that stretch and grow them.
Once onboarded, what surrounds them is a high-performance culture that accelerates outcomes. We have found that high expectations don’t intimidate the right hires – they activate them. And that’s how we ensure every individual contributes meaningfully to our vision, not just our metrics.
Q4. What long-term value does the Gen-G program bring to a business where each hire can directly impact product agility and user experience?
Generation-G was never about just filling roles; it was a strategic intervention to solve deeper challenges in how we attract, develop, and retain early talent. Before its inception, our dependency on lateral hires often introduced legacy thinking that limited agility and innovation. We needed a system that could scale not just talent, but also culture, and Gen-G delivered on that vision.
The program has become an enabler for long-term workforce planning and succession for critical functions.
By institutionalising Gen-G, we have significantly reduced our reliance on lateral hiring, with less than 10% of open roles in these verticals being backfilled laterally in the past two years. This shift has allowed us to build true Gameskraft natives – individuals who are deeply aligned with our pace, philosophy, and product DNA.
From a business lens, this cohort has been instrumental in driving product agility and elevating user experiences. Their early exposure to high-stakes projects accelerates learning and impact.
The numbers speak for themselves: an offer-to-joining ratio of over 95% year on year, and attrition of less than 8% over the last two years. That’s not just talent acquisition – that’s long-term value creation!
Q/ Does Gameskraft Involve Freshers in live product cycles early on, or is there a structured ramp-up period?
At Gameskraft, we believe in immersion, not isolation. Our Generation-G hires aren’t kept on the sidelines – they are embedded into our manpower planning from day one. The goal isn’t just onboarding; it’s acceleration.
Every fresher goes through a thoughtfully designed ramp-up journey that includes a three-week bootcamp, domain-specific immersion, and interactions with leadership.
From within the bootcamp itself, they start working on live projects – not simulations, but actual business problems – where the expected outcome is often a fully functional application. This builds the confidence and capability to contribute to running product cycles almost immediately.
We’ve seen that early exposure to live products not only boosts functional readiness but also deepens their understanding of customer-centric thinking. That’s how we ensure that our freshers don’t just start strong, they stay impactful.
Q/ What role does cross-functional collaboration play for early hires at Gameskraft? Do they engage with product, design, or analytics teams early?
In a dynamic product ecosystem like gaming, where user experience evolves in real-time and decisions are deeply data-informed, cross-functional collaboration is foundational.
That’s why from Day 1, our Generation-G hires are immersed in environments where product thinking, design sensibility, and analytical depth intersect. During their onboarding bootcamp itself, they’re exposed to co-creation with various functions to get a fully functional application ready within three weeks!
These experiences aren’t just enriching – they’re transformative. We have witnessed how early exposure to these touchpoints accelerates professional maturity:
- Engineers begin to ask “why” before they get to the “how” – and that shift is what turns coders into creators.
- Designers move from crafting screens to shaping experiences, thinking not only about UI but the intention behind every interaction.
- Product hires evolve from requirement-gathering to problem-framing, learning how to define what’s worth building – and more importantly, why now.
At Gameskraft, our goal is to build full-stack problem solvers who can thrive in ambiguity, think holistically, and collaborate with purpose. Cross-functional immersion is one of the most powerful ways we make that vision real.
Also Read: Should AI Replace Empathy? The Limits of Technology in Hiring
Q/ What makes a high-bar, low-volume early talent strategy sustainable in a business like yours and how do you see this model evolving over the next few years?
At first glance, our early talent numbers may appear modest when compared to big tech giants – but behind those numbers is a high-impact strategy that’s both deliberate and deeply sustainable.
Today, nearly 75% of our entry-level roles are fulfilled through Generation-G. This isn’t just a hiring pipeline – it’s a talent engine designed to drive long-term value. Gen-G hires consistently show the lowest attrition rates, not just in the industry but even compared to internal cohorts. That retention, coupled with high performance, makes this model incredibly cost-effective and scalable.
Without this structure, we’d be locked into a cycle of lateral hiring – and with that comes inefficiency. For example, to hire 50 lateral candidates, you might need to roll out 150 offers. That’s a tremendous operational burden and a significant bandwidth drain on the business. If our model makes our hiring numbers “look low,” it’s because we’ve chosen quality over churn, and that’s a trade-off we are proud to make.
Over the past few years, this model has already scaled across Tech, Design, Product, and Analytics. We’ve embedded it into manpower planning and succession pipelines, and the results are measurable. Consultant costs for hiring at an early talent level have dropped to 0%, and we’ve built a future-ready bench that deeply understands our systems, culture, and pace.
We see Generation-G not just as a hiring initiative, but as a strategic advantage – one that continues to shape how we scale people, performance, and product excellence together.
Nitin is a TISS 2003 graduate and is currently at Gameskraft as their CHRO. He has played a key role in successfully scaling up startups to 5X growth and in establishing HR as a strategic business partner. Nitin has managed HR Centres of Excellence globally and provided HR Business Partnering support for all Global Support functions. His previous assignments include working with HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank, and Wipro e-Peripherals.
