Gaming platform Fantok suspends operations citing impact of 28% GST levy
real money gaming platform Fantok has suspended operations citing the impact from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) Council’s decision last month to impose a 28% levy on the full face value of gaming transactions.
“The evolving landscape of regulatory measures in the real money gaming sector in India, as announced earlier this year, has presented complex legal hurdles that have forced us to reevaluate our direction,” the bootstrapped company said in a LinkedIn post.
This has come in the light of several real money gaming platforms either cutting down scale or halting operations altogether following the GST announcement. Notably, the new levy is yet to be implemented, and is only expected to come into force from October.
“Our legal advisors have indicated that the current environment creates uncertainties that we cannot ignore.
The recent imposition of a 28% GST on the entire realised amount, coupled with high TDS and issues related to payment gateways, has further compounded these challenges. Additionally, the substantial cost of customer conversion has placed a significant strain on our resources,” Fantok added.
Recently, gaming unicornMobile Premier League (MPL) laid off 350 employees, while also announcing a reduction in office and cloud infrastructure costs.
Spartan Poker, another real money gaming platform, laid off 125 people earlier this month, while Kavin Bharti Mittal’s Rush Gaming Universe reduced 22% of its workforce. Another real money gaming startup, Quizy, which had raised seed funding, also shut citing the impact from GST.
Also read | Layoffs and shutdowns as GST chars real-money gaming companies
Founded by Ronak Ahuja, Prakhar Saxena and Ashok Vishwakarma in 2022, Fantok said in its LinkedIn post that the
