For India’s cosplayers, playtime gets serious

Once a niche hobby, cosplay in India is now a thriving blend of entrepreneurship and artistry for its many practitioners

- Shrey Pacheco

(Clockwise from top) Cosplayers Medha Srivastava and Dikshat Dogra.

(PHOTOS COURTESY COSPLATE)

India’s win at the 2025 World Cosplay Summit in August for Best Armor was a highlight for a subculture that has been on the rise in the country for a few years now.

What was once considered a niche hobby (even by India’s conservative standards) has become a powerful and popular form of expression and identity, while also opening new avenues for artists to showcase their talent. With pan-India events like Comic Con India and the India Gaming Show supporting them and giving cosplay a stage, this subculture is well and truly ready for its turn in the limelight.

In most cases, cosplay starts out as a simple hobby and a form of expression. After all, what better way to showcase your love for an anime, comic, or game character than by dressing up as them? But for many, this evolves into something deeper: an expression of identity, community, or even an outlet for artistic passion.

For Dikshat Dogra, a VFX artist from New Delhi, cosplay started as a hobby but soon became more than that. “During the lockdown, there wasn’t much to do, so I drew anime characters in my free time,” says Dogra. He heard about cosplay and, after a little bit of research, decided to participate. “I didn’t have a lot of friends, but through cosplay, I met a lot of people. It’s been a positive growth in my life.”

For others, it was a childhood dream come true. “As a kid, when people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I liked cartoons a lot, so I wanted to be a cartoon, People said, ‘You can’t be a cartoon, It's not a career,” recalls Saurabh Singh Rawat, a former art director and founder of Metalbender Studio. By 2015, he learned about Comic Con, where people dress up and become cartoon characters.