"Pokemon Go", the highly popular augmented reality mobile video game, was released back in July. Millions of players across the world were able to enjoy the relatively unique new game. However, several countries were apparently not included in the fun for one reason or another. Among these countries is India, the second most populated country in the world.
Now, nearly five months later, the game has finally arrived on Indian shores, thanks to a partnership between Niantic Labs and one of India's biggest LTE mobile network providers, Reliance Jio.
The Mumbai-based service provider was apparently able to strike a deal with Niantic in order to bring their game into the country. As part of the deal, Reliance Digital Stores and their select partners will essentially be transformed into Pokéstops and Pokémon Gyms within the game.
This will not only generate a huge amount of foot traffic into those areas but will also perhaps increase the company's subscriber base. Niantic's Chief Executive Officer and founder, John Hanke, also announced the partnership and mentioned that he and his team are quite excited to bring the game into the country.
Aside from the geo-location stipulation in the deal with Reliance, the provider is also launching a big promotion that will further drive up its subscriptions. The company has announced that it will be offering free data, roaming and voice calling to interested subscribers in India which will last until March 2017.
"Pokémon Go" has accumulated over 500 million downloads since it was launched. However, the game's player base quickly dwindled in the following months, mostly because of the hype for the game dying down.
Despite this fact, "Pokemon Go" continues to have a strong number of avid players, which will likely increase now that the game is available in India. A country with over 1.3 billion people, according to the latest statistics.
