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livemint.com / 1 month ago
livemint.com / 1 month ago
The hard reset: Six months after the ban, real-money gaming firms try to rebuild from zero
Dream11, Games24x7, Gameskraft, Mobile Premier League, Zupee, WinZO and PokerBaazi, who offered real-money formats such as fantasy sports, rummy and poker. Dream11 had over 250 million users, while WinZO had over 200 million, Zupee over 150 million, and Games24x7 about 120 million.The sector had also attracted significant investor interest, with Tiger Global, Peak XV Partners, DST Global, Falcon Edge, Matrix Partners and WestCap Group among the backers.
Over the past five years, global investors had poured in at least $2.8 billion into India’s RMG market, backing rapid user growth and strong monetization.All of that came to a grinding halt when the Indian government passed the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, effectively outlawing formats that involved entry fees and cash rewards.Before the ban, the model was straightforward. Users paid entry fees to participate in contests or games, a portion of which was redistributed as winnings, while the platform retained a commission of around 10-20%.“If you look at the Indian gaming industry over the last decade, what really monetized was real-money gaming,” says Nitish Mittersain, managing director of Nazara Technologies, which had exposure to RMG through its investment in Moonshine Technology, the parent company of PokerBaazi.
He added that in RMG the conversion rate of paying users as a percentage of overall users was around 15%, while it is around 0.5% for games that rely on in-app purchases.It is this monetization element that made RMG the dominant part of Indian gaming.However, even before the ban, regulatory pressure had been building. A long-running dispute over how online gaming should be taxed remains before the Supreme Court.
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