PM calls gaming and toy sector to play bigger role

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SME Times News Bureau | 24 Jun, 2021
Noting that India's share in $100 billion global toy market is only around one-and-a-half billion dollars, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday stressed to focus on "toyconomy" advising country's gaming and toy industry to play a big role in this sector.

By focusing on toy and gaming sector, the Prime Minister said that country's crores of rupees going outside can be saved.

"Today, we import around 80 per cent of our toys as well. That is, crores of rupees of the country are going out on these. Today, the world wants to understand the present potential of India, the art-culture of India, the society of India in a better way. Our Toys and Gaming Industry can play a big role in this," the Prime Minister said while addressing participants of Toycathon-2021 via video conferencing.

In the last five-six years, the Prime Minister said hackathons have been made big platforms to solve the problems of the country and that the thinking behind this is to organize the country's potential and to give it a medium.

"The effort is that our youth should be directly connected to the challenges and solutions of the country."

The Prime Minister mentioned if the child's first school is the family, then the first book and the first friends are these toys. "The first communication of the child with the society is through these toys."

"There is another very big aspect associated with toys, which everyone needs to know. This is the economy of the world of Toys and Gaming - Toyconomy."

Pointing that most of the online or digital games available in the market currently are not Indian in concept, the Prime Minister told the participants to take advantage of this loophole as the concepts of many games either promote violence or cause mental stress.

Toycathon 2021 was jointly launched by the Ministry of Education, WCD Ministry, MSME Ministry, DPIIT, Textile Ministry, I&B Ministry and All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) on January 5 this year to crowd-source innovative toys and games ideas.

The event aimed at boosting the Toy Industry in India to help it capture a wider share of the toy market.

Around 1.2 lakh participants from across India registered and submitted more than 17,000 ideas for the Toycathon 2021, out of which 1,567 ideas have been shortlisted for the three-day online Toycathon grand finale, being held from June 22 to June 24. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, this grand finale will have teams with digital toy ideas, while a separate physical event will be organized for non-digital toy concepts.

India's domestic market as well as the global toy market offers a huge opportunity to our manufacturing sector.