And...in addition...it happens to be a heck of an improvment and good aircraft for carrier operations. Carries a lot of ordinance for its size. Had very decent range. and has great kinematics.Cost is probably the main reason for the Russian Mig-29K decision. India's acquisition already took care of the development costs and India's order enabled Russia to gain some economy of scale & lower per aircraft cost as well.
All of these add up to a significantly larger air wing that can put more aircraft on target, each of which which can do about as much damage (and more) than their SU-33s. The SU-33 is not good at ir to ground...it is almost purely an air superiority aircraft.
So a larger air wing of Mig-29Ks is going to project more power than the smaller SU-33 air wing.
Now the Chnese, they have designed the J-15s to do the air to ground role well, ith precision weapons, so the smaller size of the Mig-29K is not as big a factor...but still something t consider on their 65,000 tn carriers.