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With 260 million users, a trusted brand, and strong talent pool, Jain believes the company is well-positioned to pursue new ideas
Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Bill, 2025, cleared by both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha this week, seeks to ban all forms of online money games. (File)
Harsh Jain, co-founder of Dream Sports — the parent company of real-money gaming major Dream11 — has ruled out layoffs at the sports technology firm despite the severe impact of the government’s blanket ban on real-money games (RMG).
In an interview with Moneycontrol, Harsh Jain said the company had no plans for layoffs and assured that “all the talent here is safe.” He emphasised that Dream Sports intends to rebuild by leveraging its workforce, noting that the only way to recover from losing 95 percent of its revenue is by creating new products that can be monetised in the future — a process, he said, that “will always start with talent.”
On August 22, Dream11 suspended all paid contests on its fantasy sports platform and shifted entirely to free-to-play online social games. The move followed the Centre’s new gaming law that prohibits online money games — defined as those where users deposit funds, directly or indirectly, with the expectation of earning winnings.
The shift is a major blow, with 95 percent of Dream Sports’ revenues and all of its profits stemming from cash-based contests now deemed illegal.
Jain said the company still has significant internal demand for talent across its businesses — including sports content and commerce platform FanCode, sports experiences unit DreamSetGo, game development arm Dream Game Studios, and fintech venture Dream Money — alongside new products in the pipeline. He also noted that Dream Sports’ cash reserves were sufficient to sustain operations and its workforce for a couple of years.
Dream Sports had reported operational revenue of Rs 6,384.49 crore in FY23, up from Rs 3,841 crore in FY22.
Jain likened the company’s current position to that of a Series B startup: “We already have more than a Series B company has. We have capital, we have the people, we have the user base, we have a brand, and we have some entrepreneurs that are a little more battle scarred than even before.” If any new products succeed, he said, the company’s distribution channels would allow them to “scale widely overnight.”
Betting on AI
Looking ahead, Jain said Dream Sports will focus on sports-related opportunities in India powered by artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in the creator economy.
“We have sports content, commerce, fan engagement, analytics, sports performance, and merchandise. All of this is going to be disrupted by AI. And now I have 500 engineers whom I can allocate to solving these problems,” he told Moneycontrol.
With 260 million users, a trusted brand, and strong talent pool, Jain believes the company is well-positioned to pursue new ideas. While global expansion is on the radar, he stressed that India will remain the priority.
“I still want to be India first. It’s not only India. And we’ll always be Make-in-India. I am not interested in having offices worldwide. Our HQ will continue to be in Mumbai,” he said.
Founded in 2008 by Jain and Bhavit Sheth, Dream Sports was last valued at $8 billion after raising $840 million in November 2021 from investors including Falcon Edge, DST Global, D1 Capital, Redbird Capital, Tiger Global, TPG, and Footpath Ventures.
Aparna Deb is a Subeditor and writes for the business vertical of News18.com. She has a nose for news that matters. She is inquisitive and curious about things. Among other things, financial markets, economy, a…Read More
Aparna Deb is a Subeditor and writes for the business vertical of News18.com. She has a nose for news that matters. She is inquisitive and curious about things. Among other things, financial markets, economy, a… Read More
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