India just had its first Pokemon Go event, and the game isn’t even available here

Chasing Pikachu is getting huge in India. It’s not as popular as it is in the United States yet, and there are no reports of massive strange public behavior, but Indian fans are finding a global ranking for sure.

According to data from SimilarWeb, the country ranks fourth globally in terms of Pokemon Go downloads from the file hosting website APKMirror. That is a good indicator, because remember, the game isn’t even available in India yet.

And its just 3 percent of all Android devices in India, SimilarWeb told Tech in Asia, so the opportunity is clearly huge. SimilarWeb data said the fifth largest user was Indonesia, which is also playing the game with hack versions.

Effectively, Android users are downloading APK files, and iOS users are creating fake IDs to play.



On Sunday, more than 400 “trainers” got together in Bangalore for what is likely the country’s first mass Pokemon Go event, armed with smartphones and tablets.

“I had just created a page and sent invites to a dozen of my friends, and I woke up the next day to see thousands of responses,” gamer Ishaan Arya, who organized the event, told Tech in Asia.

Ishaan is now planning to take the event to Delhi, and maybe eventually to other cities as well.

A poll on the Pokemon Go India page also shows that users are heavily skewed towards Bangalore – a result of the community developing fast in the tech hub of the country, Ishaan said.



Players are spending their free time walking around looking for Pokestops – hubs where a gamer can restock on supplies. In India, it’s taking them to some quite unexpected places.

“It gave me the push to finally start walking or jogging,” said Abhishek Bajaj, who works for Microsoft’s accelerator in Bangalore.

“What makes it more fun is bumping into friends at Pokestops unexpectedly and then getting into conversations on how to scale up your Pokemon or take over the nearby gym,” he said.

But is the fact that Indians still cannot get the game officially a problem?



No, says Ishaan, who runs Just Another Gaming Site.

“It works perfectly, and you can even make in-app purchases, so it’s not a big deal.”

The one problem is that users seem to be unable to get to the game once evening sets in in India, due to servers overloading.

“Up until last week, we were only unable to get on from about 10 pm IST, because that’s when the US woke up. But then they launched in 26 other countries in Europe, and the time difference is making it hard for Indians to play in the evening,” reckons Ishaan.

This story originally appeared on Tech In Asia.