India’s real money gaming firms are scrambling to navigate the curveball thrown at them by the government which has all but ended their operations.
MPL is laying off 60-80 percent of its India workforce following India’s real-money gaming ban, Moneycontrol reports. MPL had between 500-600 employees in India, so this move is expected to impact around 400 employees. The layoffs will affect teams across policy, marketing, finance, operations, engineering, and legal.
The layoffs were announced by MPL co-founder Sai Srinivas in a memo. “As a group, India accounted for 50 percent of M-League’s revenues and this change would mean that we would no longer be making any revenue from India in the near future,” Srinivas said in the memo. “While this is a big setback – it doesn’t change our mission. It does mean that we need to work hard to find a new business model for MPL in India. Shubh, myself and the rest of the leadership team are committed to achieve the same,” he added.
Luckily for MPL, it had significantly expanded its presence beyond the Indian market to several international regions including Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa. Its first entry into Africa was marked by launching the app in Nigeria in partnership with Carry1st, a leading African mobile gaming publisher, aiming to engage over 270 million gamers in the continent. It had also acquired German startup GameDuell to foray into Europe. MPL now operates on four continents. As of FY24, international markets accounted for about 31% of MPL’s total revenue, with Europe contributing nearly 28% and the US around 2.6%.
Real-money gaming firms have been looking to navigate India’s complete ban on real-money gaming in different ways. Dream11 has said that it’ll look at alternative business models, including free games and merchandize, and said that it has no current plans to lay off employees. But with MPL — another unicorn in the sector — throwing in the towel and laying off most of its India workforce, smaller real money gaming companies might have no choice but to follow suit, which could lead to some serious job losses in India’s startup space.