What Does a Serious Games Workshop Cost in India?

"Nobody in L&D publishes prices. So here's mine, what moves it, and how to work out whether it's worth it."

I should be fair to my own industry for a second. The reason "get in touch for a quote" is everywhere is not mystery pricing strategy. It's that a discovery call is much harder to walk away from than a number on a page.

Which is fine for the vendor and annoying for you, because you just want to know if this category is even in your ballpark before you give up forty minutes of your Thursday.

So. Numbers.

Starting Point: What to Expect

One facilitated serious game session in India, 15 to 25 people: programmes start at around ₹50,000.

Starting point, not a fixed price and not a ceiling. What moves it is below.

That covers a discovery call and brief beforehand, the session itself (half a day to a full day), an EPPA debrief, a written summary of the behaviour that showed up, and a committed action plan out of every participant.

None of those are add-ons and I won't sell them separately. A game without a proper debrief is an afternoon of fun that produces nothing, and I'd rather not take the money for it.

What Drives the Cost Up

Group size. 30 to 50 people is a different animal to 20. More dynamics running at once, more to track, more structure needed in the debrief so the quiet table doesn't vanish. Price goes up with size, though not in a straight line.

Seniority. A room of VPs and directors takes more preparation, more calibration to their actual context, and a smarter debrief. Not because they're harder people - because they arrive with strong priors and the game has to earn its way past those. It's a different engagement to a first-line manager session, and it prices differently.

Location. Outside Bengaluru, travel gets added and I quote it openly and in advance. Outstation is absolutely fine, I do it often, but Mumbai or Chennai means a flight, a hotel and a cab on top of the fee. Budget for it now rather than being surprised later.

Multi-batch programmes. If your leadership population is bigger than one room, you're running the same thing several times, and that prices differently from a one-off. It also gets better as it goes - by batch three I know your business, and the sessions get sharper because of it.

Custom game design. A different category entirely. Weeks of design, playtesting, iteration, building the debrief from nothing. Worth it when your challenge is genuinely too specific for an existing game to reach. Ask me about it separately if that sounds like you.

What Is Not in the Starting Price

Venue, food and equipment. I bring the game, you bring the room, the tables and the coffee. That's standard, and it keeps my fee from carrying costs that swing wildly depending on which hotel you like.

Follow-up coaching and post-session measurement design aren't in the base fee either. Some organisations want a proper framework to check behaviour at 60 or 90 days. Some want coaching for a specific person the debrief surfaced. Both available, both quoted separately.

How to Think About the Investment

The first question is always the same: how does this compare to a normal workshop of the same length? Per day, per head, a serious game costs more. Yes.

But per day is the wrong unit. The unit is cost per unit of behaviour that actually changed.

A standard leadership workshop at ₹30,000 for a full day with 25 people is ₹1,200 a head. Lovely number. If the day produces high engagement and no lasting change - which is what most content-led days produce - then your cost per unit of change is the entire ₹30,000, because you bought zero units.

The comparisons that actually matter are less comfortable. What does it cost you when a difficult conversation doesn't happen? When a headcount decision gets settled by whoever argued hardest rather than whoever was right? When a senior manager avoids a conflict until it lands on a director's desk three weeks later?

Those costs are real and recurring. They're invisible only because they get absorbed into the ordinary cost of being a company, and nobody ever writes them on an invoice.

I'm not going to claim a game makes them disappear. It makes the pattern underneath them visible and nameable, which is the part you can't do without. What you do in the six months after is the bit that decides the return.

What ₹50,000 Actually Buys

Let's make it concrete. At the starting price, for 15 to 25 people: a discovery conversation to work out the real challenge and pick the right game, a fully facilitated half to full day, an EPPA debrief that names what came out, a written summary of what the group showed about itself, and an action plan from every person in the room.

₹50,000 across 20 people is ₹2,500 a head.

For comparison, one hour of executive coaching runs ₹5,000 to ₹15,000, and works on one person. The game works on the individual and the team at the same time, which matters, because leadership behaviour is a team-shaped problem living in individual-shaped bodies.

Getting a Specific Quote

Everything gets scoped individually, because all the factors above move the number. Tell me the group, the challenge, the city and what you want out of it.

Quote comes back within 24 hours of that conversation. No hidden costs, no licensing fee, no "implementation charge". My fee covers everything I bring. You bring the room and the people.

Come and start the conversation. Or have a look at the games first and see if one of them already looks like your problem.

With love from Bengaluru, this is Arvindh saying over and out.