Garena, a Singaporean global online games developer and publisher, today announced the launch of Free Fire India, available for download exclusively in India from September 5.
The announcement was made at a launch event today by Garena’s Co-founder Gang Ye and Yotta Infrastructure’s (“Yotta”) Co-founder and Chairman Darshan Hiranandani, in the presence of the High Commissioner of the Republic of Singapore to the Republic of India, HE Simon Wong.
Leveraging Yotta’s local cloud infrastructure to enhance user experience
Yotta, a Hiranandani Group company, will provide the local cloud hosting and storage infrastructure for Free Fire India. As a MeitY-empanelled service provider, Yotta will ensure best in-class management of personal data of Indian users on local servers and network connectivity services to support Garena’s product offerings in India, including in esports.
Users encouraged to #PlayItRight
Free Fire India will offer features and content specifically developed for Indian users, as well as a range of features designed to promote safe, healthy and fun gameplay. These include a verification system to enable parental supervision, gameplay limitations and ‘take a break’ reminders.
Celebrating Indian sports culture: MS Dhoni as inaugural brand ambassador
Garena also unveiled Indian cricket icon MS Dhoni as the new brand ambassador for Free Fire India. He will be celebrated as the first Indian sportsperson to be featured in-game as a playable character, “Thala”. Dhoni will be joined by other leading sportspersons, such as football captain Sunil Chhetri, badminton champion Saina Nehwal, tennis legend Leander Paes, and Kabbadi champion Rahul Chaudhari.
Launch of Free Fire India Championship
Earlier this year, Garena and Yotta entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Government of Uttar Pradesh to drive the development of esports in India. Today, Garena announced that the flagship Free Fire India Championship (FFIC) will take place later this month. Open to teams across India, the winners will earn the opportunity to represent India at the Free Fire World Series in Thailand this November. More details of FFIC and other esports initiatives dedicated to Free Fire India will be announced over the coming weeks.
Speaking at the event, H.E. Simon Wong, High Commissioner of Singapore to India, said, “Garena’s launch of Free Fire India and commitment to localising and developing the esports ecosystem locally is testament to the vibrancy of the mobile games and esports space in India, and to India’s potential for global leadership in this area. I look forward to greater partnerships in the digital media, entertainment and esports fields between India and Singapore.”
Gang Ye, Co-founder of Garena, said, “India is home to very passionate communities of esports enthusiasts and we are excited to be able to support our fans from Bharat with the launch of Free Fire India. We look forward to providing an engaging and highly localised experience for Indian users. We believe our partnership with Yotta will ensure that our users can enjoy the highest quality gameplay experience and benefit from Yotta’s expertise in protecting and securing Indian user data. We are also committed to supporting the development of India’s esports and startup ecosystems. The Free Fire India Esports Championships is our first step in building out our platform of esports events and activities in the coming months to empower Indian esports athletes to succeed globally.”
Darshan Hiranandani, Co-founder & Chairman, Yotta emphasised the strides made in the data centre sector in India, stating, “Our -partnership with Garena is a strong endorsement of the significant progress in the Indian data centre industry. We are pleased to bring our unique data hosting and cybersecurity expertise for the benefit of Indian users. This partnership will foster further India-Singapore technology collaboration.”