DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS
India built a ₹32,000 crore real money gaming industry - then banned it, taxed it into insolvency, and called it reform.
India's real money gaming industry had everything going for it.
₹32,000 crore in revenues by 2024. 488 million online gamers - nearly 20% of the global player base. ₹25,896 crore in FDI, with 85% flowing into pay-to-play formats. Dream11 valued at $8 billion. MPL at $2 billion.
RMG - fantasy sports, rummy, poker - was not just a gaming story. It was one of India's fastest-growing consumer internet sectors, underpinned by IPL, cheap data, and 700 million smartphones.
Then the government dismantled it. Systematically, in stages, and with what may be the most punishing retrospective tax demand in Indian startup history.
(1/11)
India spent a decade learning why retrospective tax is poison. We're about to throw the lesson away.
Picture this: your team wins a cricket match, clean, by the rules of the game that day. A year later, the umpire changes a rule and applies it backward — and declares you lost the match you already won.
That's retrospective tax. You broke nothing. They moved the line, then pointed it at your past.
We did exactly this to Vodafone in 2012, chasing them over a 2007 deal. Cairn Energy got hit too. Both went to international arbitration. Both won. India refunded over $1.2 billion and spent years as the cautionary tale that every global investor cited as the reason they hesitated on us.
In 2021, we finally repealed it and called retro taxation a thing of the past. Capital started trusting us again.
This week, the courts upheld retrospective GST on online gaming. Dream11 and an entire industry now owe tax on years of operations under rules that didn't exist at the time.
Retrospective tax doesn't punish what you did. It punishes you for not predicting what the government would later wish you'd done.
As a country, we should not set such a precedent.
#Noretrospectivetax
Three punches in a row.
First, GST on online gaming jumped to 28% on deposits. Dream11 took the hit and rebuilt the business.
Then the government banned real-money gaming. They took the hit again and pivoted to sports and stocks.
Today, the courts upheld retrospective GST — paying tax on years of past operations under rules that didn't exist at the time.
No company survives a third punch like that. It will wipe out the whole industry.
@harshjain85 and the @Dream11 team built something super special. They complied with every rule, always looked after their users, absorbed every increase, and never asked for sympathy. Just kept building.
What got upheld today doesn't punish bad actors. It punishes builders.
The silence on Twitter is the most depressing part of all this. I really hope the government reconsiders — there is still a way to save this industry and the people who built it.
Go ahead and BAN ALCOHOL AND CIGARETTES immediately. 🛑🚫
Absolute, unadulterated hypocrisy. If the Govt and Supreme Court are so righteously obsessed with "public morality" and "saving citizens from vice" that they’ll pass draconian PROGA laws and slap unpayable, retrospective tax nukes to kill Dream11 overnight, why stop there?
Let's see the spine. Alcohol causes fatal liver cirrhosis, domestic violence, and body counts on our roads every single night. Cigarettes are literally packaged, state-taxed cancer that suffocates public health. But oh wait... the government pulls in hundreds of thousands of crores in excise duties from liquor syndicates and tobacco conglomerates, so that "vice" gets a free pass, right?
A tech company builds a data-driven, strategic platform that employs thousands of engineers and pumps sponsorship into Indian sports, and it gets labeled a "gambling menace" and strangled out of existence. Meanwhile, actual toxic poisons are sold on every single street corner because the state likes its cut of the sin tax.
They stand on a fake moral high ground claiming they are "protecting the public from the vice of betting." But let’s say what everyone already knows out loud: plenty of dirty funding from certain politicians, MLAs, and MPs flows straight into untraceable, offshore illegal betting apps operated out of tax havens. By killing transparent, tax-compliant, domestic tech giants that employed thousands of our own people, the state hasn't stopped gambling—they've purposefully funneled millions of Indian users directly into the hands of these illegal, black-market offshore networks
Stop hiding behind the fake moral mask of "protecting the public." You don't care about societal harm; you just care about what you can over-tax and control. If you're going to destroy a sunrise tech ecosystem under the guise of public good, ban the actual killers first, or admit this was just a targeted, revenue-grabbing hit job.
This wasn't a regulatory move to safeguard citizens; it was a devastating revenue-grabbing hit job that deliberately leaves the door wide open for illegal offshore rackets backed by powerful pockets. Absolute circus.
Offshore betting platforms are thriving during the #IPL, with links circulating openly and transactions happening via UPI, completely bypassing GST and TDS.
While platforms like Dream11 & My11Circle are compliant, illegal operators continue to evade the ban.
Urge Hon’ble IT Minister @AshwiniVaishnaw ji to take immediate action. #Betting #IPL
@GrandLeagueGuru@Dream11 Dream11 previously stated they were moving away from fantasy games, so why is this happening in the app? Either remove the fantasy section completely, or if you want to keep it, do it properly. Just remove your fantasy section, and you'll see your watch-along views increase.
@FantasycricPro 🚨 Dream11 ₹499 Subscription: Paisa Barbaad! 🫠
Viren Bhai Dream11 ka Ads-Free subscription ek bada trap hai! 🛑
👉 Worst User Experience: ₹499 dene ke baad bhi jab contest join karo to bs 1 team forcefully live streams dikhate hain. Paisa lekar bhi zabardasti ka engagement? 🤡