Entrepreneurship is never meant to be smooth sailing, but it’s one of those rare endeavors in which decades of work can be wiped out overnight.
Dream11 CEO Harsh Jain has said that his 14-year-old business was shut down in just 72 hours by the Indian government’s new bill, which banned real-money online games in India. He says that his company was completely blindsided by the government’s moves — Dream11 had at the time been wondering if the government would impose 40% GST on the sector, but the government chose to shut down the entire real-money gaming space entirely.
“On Tuesday, the media reported (on the ban),” Jain said in an interview with Moneycontrol. “On Wednesday was the Lok Sabha approvals, Thursday was Rajya Sabha, and on Friday we all went offline with our current business model. And then the President signed it, and it became gazetted as an Act,” he added.
Jain said that the move had all but crippled the company. He said that as a result of the ban, Dream11’s parent company had lost 95 percent of its revenue, and 100 percent of its profits. “It’s like moving from working in a pre-IPO company to suddenly being in a Series B startup. That’s the mindset shift everyone has to make,” Jain said.
He added that unlike it had been rumoured, Dream11 wouldn’t fight the new bill in the Supreme Court. “The government has made it clear they don’t want this. We won’t waste energy fighting and will do what’s allowed by law…if regulation changes again, we’ll re-evaluate,” Jain told ET. “We’d rather build for the future than litigate the past.”
Jain said that the company will now focus on its other arms, such as FanCode, its sports streaming and merchandising platform with contracts for F1 and La Liga, and DreamSetGo, its sports travel venture. He also said that even though they’d shut down real-money gaming on the platform, “millions” of people were still playing their fantasy leagues for free. “People want to feel like a team owner, they want to compete with their friends. How we find a business model here that is acceptable to the government is something we’ll keep innovating and experimenting,” Jain said.
Jain said that this move in a way took the company back to its roots. When the company was founded in India, he said that it was called Sporta Technologies Pvt Ltd, which stood for “Sports Data” technology. “Now we’ll focus all our energy on Sports AI. The way AI is going to disrupt every industry, it’s also going to disrupt sports. I now have 500 engineers who I can allocate to solving these problems,” Jain smiled. It’s not easy to see your life’s work being taken away in an instant, but Dream11 and Harsh Jain sure seem to be putting up a brave face in the midst of what must be exceedingly trying situations for the company and its employees.