Inside the Govt's ban on online game companies: 'A wild week we've never seen'

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Shouvik Das 7 min read 24 Aug 2025, 12:59 AM IST SUPPLIES on online games wiped out crores in value, causing the fear of startups, work and the future of India’s digital economy. (Pixabay) Summary This week we wrote about how India’s half billion players and a multi-billion-dollar industry were blinded by sudden prohibition, which raised big questions about regulation, jobs and investor confidence. New Delhi: Three weeks ago I met a senior executive of one of India’s best funded startups at a swanky roof bar in one of Delhi’s best hotels. It was a relaxed, informal meeting, at the end of five months of the Marathon High Court hearings. In the midst of a light, windy drop that traced the glass walls of the bar, I asked him what would happen if the Supreme Court did not decide in favor of his business? After all, tax requirements of more than 5x were the company’s reported revenue at stake – not just for him, but his entire industry. “Well, I’ve done it for more than a decade. When things go south, I think we are all looking for other posts – with a part of my life that may not be for nothing, ‘he said. “But I hope we will all be in order.” Exactly 22 days later, the central government of India banned the industry. The past week was an important one for all of us that covers India’s online game industry. Since we – managers, advocates, policy consultants and journalists – were through the proposed legislation to prohibit the people like Dream11, Rummyculture, My11Circle and Mobile Premier League, there was one feeling that came out loud and clear: It was not a negotiating tactic. For the past four days there has been a gradual learning curve. During one of the information sessions in the ministry, a top government official told American journalists that the center estimates have about good faith that the amount of money lost in playing fantasy sports, Rummy and Poker online each year was above £ 20,000. “They say they play more than 50 people ‘games’ on their platform. In fact, each of them is designed that their algorithms first give you a penny victories, and then make you addicted and then lose thousands. There is no exception: Any story that says otherwise is a marketing campaign, “one of the many officials I have met over the past four days, said. A second official raised an even more fundamental question. “Is it different from Satta (gambling), really? Say that there is a cricket match tomorrow, and you decide to use a hundred dollars to select the best player in the country in your team. The player has a bad day and comes out for a duck, and you lose all your money. Now I tell two things – what skill did you need to have, and how does it differ from a blind gouse? ‘ Although I am sure that the series of arguments will continue to broaden and the online game saga is far from over, there is an important learning to take from here that may not have spoken enough: the utilization of the judiciary to bypass management is just as bad as the idea of ​​an industry that is eradicated on an nearly $ 25 billion. Mint performed a full page with stories on Thursday, along with insights from the Union Minister of IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, the IT Secretary’s Krishnan, and more. If my little story is interested here, here is a complete list of stories to read if you want to get to know exactly what happened here: Tuesday, August 19: The Cabinet approves a possible law to prohibit the online fare sector Wednesday, August 20: The industry writes to the Minister of Home Affairs, AMIT Shah, who is a new court battle, and questions are being made around a mass. Infers and investors are causing careful about the way forward, as the bill cleanses the lower house of the Indian parliament without protest. Thursday, August 21: The law is making the Upper House of Parliament amid a protest march, as the industry begins to investigate how a ‘pivot’ can work for them. Many businesses are also starting to end their core products. Friday, August 22: The president gives her permission to the bill, and leaves the government only to formally notify the bill and transform it into law. Criminal clauses vary to £ 1 and five years in prison. Saturday, August 23: S Krishnan, the IT Secretary of India, tells my colleague Jatin Grover and I that “there is no intention of going to a specific entity.” Jatin and I also spoke extensively to Krishnan on the way forward for India’s semiconductor industry. As part of this conversation, there was one area we all agreed to – to start only FABS will not help the case of India. Let me break it down in a little more details. When Taiwan began making progress thanks to Morris Chang (Reminder: Read Chip War by Chris Miller), the venerable TSMC of today did not build one day. Instead, the number of ‘FABs’ (which is what the manufacturing factories are called for semiconductor chips) remains few and hand -counted by hand. Which has truly grown as a result of Taiwan’s pressure on the manufacture of chips, the entire ecosystem – it contains sophisticated machines, gases, chemicals and many other aspects. Today, just a week away from India’s fourth national semiconductor conference, Krishnan is one of the most important people who send India’s semiconductor forward – we said that is exactly what we will try to build in the future. Our full interview also catches core data that the government has spent on chips for the past four years, and which is more needed. Much of the AI, not a single week, goes by if there is no fuss about AI. This week, my colleague Jas Bardia has seen a fairly interesting trend: that of how companies apply their own creativity line to find business opportunities – at a time when AI even took over our dinner. Jas brings out first-hand details such as Coforge, Persistent, Mphasis and Sonata-Alls among India’s top 20 technical firms at the moment. The insights are quite interesting, especially if you are an investor who is bullish about the Indian technical services industry. Interestingly, Jas and I also hampered a lot of numbers and found a rather interesting statistics – as far as venture capital, Indian startups collected only 0.3% of the amount as US startups have, in advanced development stages. Some digging has led us to a hard truth: even in the midst of a government’s push, the AI ​​industry of India may be threatened by a great risk. Again, a lack of initiative to invest heavily in research could make India dependent on the people like China, the US and some European entities. It is essential that we act now, even if the flow of capital does not jump overnight. Or are we getting something wrong here? Is threading supposed to be everything? Vodafone India on the ANVIL A cracker of a piece of my colleague Jatin Grover this week underlined the big size of the situation in which the telecommunications operator Vodafone-Idea found. In the midst of all the Ruckus, the Department of Telecommunications has now written to the Prime Minister’s office and sought feedback for the road ahead. The reason: Vodafone, after not paying its previous fees, sold shares to the center – which now owns 49% of it. But two years since then things have got worse, and Vodafone owes the government of India almost $ 23 billion. Will the government step in again to help it survive? Vodafone leadership says at this rate, the operator will be used from India within less than a year -which leaves India as a telecommunications duopoly if it really happens. The government has prepared to avoid it, but financially vodafone looks almost at the end of it. In other news: A cheaper chatgpt, a new pixel earlier this week, opened chatgpt ‘go’, which costs £ 399 a month. It is a cheaper, slightly-cut version of Chatgpt Plus, and straight is all of a sudden Gaga about it. Just like the many generation technical shifts we have already been through (the reduction of PC prices, the democratization of smartphones and the rise of free software is the top three), it seems to be time for AI services to go mainstream. Will confusion, copilot, twins and the preferences also follow? Although it is yet to be seen, what I can tell that the new Google Pixel 10, driven by the latest version of the Gemini Nano AI model, hit the currency bank. Next week you read about us if the new version of the Pixel 10 series is ready to roar – or is more the same than last year. They say smartphone innovation has delayed … or did it? 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