Won’t Challenge New Online Gaming Laws: Dream11’s Harsh Jain

As the Indian real-money gaming (RMG) ecosystem crumbles under the impact of new online gaming laws, fantasy sports giant Dream11’s cofounder and CEO Harsh Jain has reportedly said that the company has no plans to challenge the constitutional validity of the new rules.

“When our business model was constitutionally protected, we ran it. Now that the law has changed, we’ve complied immediately — even before the ban was formally signed. And I can say clearly – Dream11 will not challenge this law in court,” Jain told Storyboard18. 

Refusing to explicitly comment on the Centre’s decision to ban RMG, Jain, however, reportedly said that he had hoped for regulations rather than an outright ban. 

Citing Tamil Nadu’s example, he said that the provisions of the state’s gaming law, such as KYC, player limits and time thresholds, could have addressed all concerns related to the sector, ensured government tax revenues remained intact and kept the black market out. 

Responding to a question about any impending layoffs at Dream11, Jain said that the company has no plans to cut jobs. The company, as per him, will now reportedly focus on trimming marketing, advertising and partnership spending to extend its runway. 

“Talent is our most important asset. The only way out of this hole is by building great products, and that requires great talent. Talent comes first, and it will be the last thing to go. If we ever have to start laying off talent, that would be the day we should consider shutting down,” added Jain.

He said that the company’s employees will now be deployed towards new initiatives like “sports and AI and scaling our existing portfolio”.

On the company’s next course of business, Jain clarified that Dream11 is not pivoting to fintech, alluding to recent reports of the launch of its investment tech platform DreamMoney. He, however, noted that Dream Sports would “redeploy resources” to future opportunities, especially in the space of AI.

“We have 500 engineers who were previously focused on maintaining existing systems. Now, we’ll redirect them toward building for the future — AI-driven innovations in sports content, commerce, merchandising, and fan experiences,” Jain was quoted as saying.

Noting that 95% of the company’s revenues disappeared overnight post the online gaming laws, Jain added that Dream Sports is now focussing “more aggressively” on other businesses such as sports streaming platform FanCode, sports hospitality brand DreamSetGo, online game DreamCricket, and investment tech offering DreamMoney. 

Speaking about the fallout of the new gaming laws, Jain also rued that the RMG ecosystem, in hindsight, failed to “strongly self-regulate” itself. “Multiple self-regulatory bodies were proposed, but we never united under one. A few of us signed a code of ethics six months ago, but we should have done much more earlier to protect consumers and keep bad operators out,” Jain reportedly added. 

His comments come days after both Houses of the Parliament passed the ‘Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025’, which banned all formats of real money gaming in the country. The law subsequently received the President’s assent and has now become an Act.

Under the new rules, banks and other financial institutions are also barred from processing financial transactions of such players. 

Following the passage of the Bill, a number of startups discontinued their real money gaming operations including Zupee, Probo, Games24x7, and the list goes on. Dream11 halted all paid contests on its fantasy sports platform on August 22 and shifted entirely to free-to-play online social games.