Journey of Dream11 and Impact of Online Gaming Bill 2025

Fantasy sports, over the years, has made a special place among the crazy lovers of the game. The young generation doesn’t only enjoy being a simple spectator of the game, but also wants to create their team by putting themselves into the shoes of the leader and earn rewards based on the performances of the players.

At the start, many fantasy gaming industries started to put their feet in India. Later, with a motivated sector, Dream11 was founded back in 2008 by two young and superb co-founders, Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth. They were the first Indian gaming company to enter the club and have now become one of the top 10 innovative companies in India.

Company highlights of Dream 11 

Startup-name	Dream 11
Headquarters	Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Sector	Fantasy Gaming sports
Founders	Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth
Founded	2008
Website	dream11.com

Tracking Dream 11 and its parent company 

Dream11 is an application that allows its users to create various teams where they can earn cash based on the actual match performance of the players they have selected on their teams. Each good move of the player, including a catch, a wicket, a four, or a six, provided extra points, as the leader of the side gets 2x and the vice-captain gets 1.5x points.

Dream11 has allowed its users to play the game in various categories like Cricket, football, Kabaddi, and the NBA (National Basketball Association).

It’s a sports technology whose portfolio is associated with brands like Dream11, Fancase, DreamSetGo, DreamPay, and others. Dream Sports is a channel of the game that looks to add various fans to connect deeply with the games for their love and affection with events, experiences, and commerce.

When Jain and Bhavit founded the company 17 years ago, they hardly predicted earning the 10th rank among India’s Great Mid-size workplaces in 2019. They also got investors, including Kaaari Capital, Think Investments, Multiple Equity, Tencent, and Steadview Capital.

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Signing up for Dream11

The sign-up in the application is a very easy process where an individual will just have to go through the registration process through a few steps.

• Download the Dream11 app on your mobile device
• Register on the app with your mobile number and get the OTP.
• Put some cash into your wallet and select the match to start playing.

Dream11- Industry and its startup story

The Indian gaming industry is expected to generate USD$10060 million in revenue by 2025, with a projected CAGR of 10.08% expected for the next five years from 2025, reaching the amount of US$14770 million by 2029.

The trend is not surprising. It highlights the growth and importance of the gaming business in India, which is driven by several factors, including the population's interest in the gaming industry, which expands through smartphone penetration and increased internet accessibility.

Harsh Jain, the first co-founder of Dream11, is the CEO of the company, while Bhavith Sheth is the COO of it. As per reports, they currently have nearly 800 employees in the company.

The startup story is interesting. Both realized quite early that for the growth of the application, they would have to crack the Indian Premier League (IPL), which was the catalyst for the new fantasy sports industry to emerge. Harsh and Bhavit founded the company with the aim of making it a profitable and service-oriented opportunity.

Four years after it was founded, the company launched its first freemium service by asking for investors and inviting them to join its venture.

“While starting a company, it is important to define its culture and then align everyone to that culture. Systems and processes may have to be reinvented, but the culture will always be the same.” The reports of India Today claimed.

Dream11 Business and Revenue Model

The company operates a freemium model, which provides users with both free and premium services where they can decide to enter the free fantasy sports league and win smaller rewards, while they can also pay to enter contests with bigger payouts. It increases its user engagement and improves the monetization chances within the fantasy sports platform by a combination of free and premium offerings.

In the revenue mode, they have different sources, out of which some of the prominent ones are-

• Dream11 makes money by keeping 15% of the entry fees that they get from the contests held on the platform, as the platform charges.
• The monetary value also comes from the sale of goods through its income and propels the financial expansion of the organization.

Dream11 challenges and its growth

Any successful company faces challenges. It’s the normalcy, and that’s what happened with the company. Getting through the legal obstacles, locating the market, and then marketing the company was always an issue. On the flip side of the coin, they also had to fix the office location by planning and implementing the best technologies.

Some of the key growth areas of the Dream11 company are given below-

• It has 15.01 million concurrent users, as per the latest reports.
• It also had 220 million+ users as per the same report.
• According to March 2024, the number of registered users in Dream11 is 25000000+
• The total streamlined hours of the live content of Dream11 is 40000+ hours.
• It also has 29 sports brands as partners till March last year.

A brief look at the financial difference of Dream11 from FY21 to FY23

Finance metric	FY23	FY22	FY21
Revenue	INR 6580.8 crore	INR 4065 crore	INR 2708.4 crore
Expenses	INR 5838.7 crore	INR 3762.40 cr.	INR 2210.3 crore
Profit and loss	INR 742.1 crore	INR 302.6 crore	INR 498.1 crore

A quick summary of Dream11 

The company has achieved a strong increase in revenue from FY22 to FY23, which demonstrates the market expansion. The company saw a rise in profits despite the increased expenses. Its expenses also saw a significant increase in FY23 compared to FY22, due to the operational spending and rising depreciation expenses.

Dream11 Partnerships-

The company made various partnerships. The Antigua and Barbuda Cricket Association is a part of it in the T20 league, where the franchise earned the India-based fantasy sports platform in January 2023. They also partnered with the Legends League Cricket and reached many cricket lovers.

In the Women’s Premier League, the Mumbai Indians (MI) also closed a deal with the company in March 2023. The chief marketing officer of the sports, Vikrant Mudaliar, said, “Marquee women-centric leagues like WPL will accelerate the growth of women's cricket.”

Slowly, they also grabbed Aamir Khan, R Madhavan, and other Bollywood superstars for the new campaign of ‘sab khelenge’ during April 2023.

Dream11 Awards

The first prestigious award for the company was the Red Herring Global 100 Award, which was conducted by Red Herring in January 2013. Later, they were also named among the 10 biggest and most popular trends of 2018 in India by a report by Google.

In 2019, BCCU signed Dream11 as the official fantasy partner of the Indian Premier League and continued the partnership for the next three years. This was not only a validation of the league but also the whole fantasy gaming sector of the country.

In 2018, it was ranked at the ninth position among India’s Great Mid-size workplaces. It was one of the 42 innovative startups of the country.

Plans of Dream11

Jain stated that the company had no plans to expand the global stage during the Startup Maha Kumbh event in New Delhi. He also explained that in India, due to the large scale of the population, it has a unique platform, which could prove to be unnecessary at the global stage. Dream11 is one of the three gaming unicorns of the country, with a value of over $1 billion.

“We are the country with the largest young population. We have tailwinds of a government that is pushing technology forward more than ever before. We must take advantage of this amazing opportunity.” Jain said during the event.

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During an interview on Mint in August last year, Jain highlighted the business model of Dream11.

“The business was a complete failure. Wrong product, wrong business model, too much front-loading of capital to try to grow too fast without getting product-market fit. We made every mistake you can think of. If you have a list of things that entrepreneurs should avoid, we pretty much checked off all of them.” He addressed.

“When I had gone to fundraise and talked to VCs (venture capitalists), they said TAM (total addressable market) and all, I couldn’t understand anything. An MBA helped me a lot in understanding how to build a business out of a dream.” Jain added.

Effect of the passed Online Gaming Bill on Dream11

The company has pulled the plug on the real-money gaming business, as the reports have revealed, as they look to wipe out the legal basis of the paid fantasy sports. The Centre’s Promotion and Regulation of Online Bill has been passed by the Rajya Sabha, which has put a ban on the games, including fantasy sports, poker, and rummy.

During an internal note, Jain told his employees that there is no legal path to paid contests of the company once the law is enacted. The ban has sent shockwaves through the gaming industry as the companies brace for more financial losses with the threat of large-scale job cuts and deep concerns.

The bill has proposed that any person offering an online money gaming service in violation of the stipulated provisions will face imprisonment of three years or a fine that could be extended to INR 1 crore or both. It has also led to imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of nearly INR 50 lakh or both, for those parties that indulge in the advertisements.

Dream11, which has moved its back to the India at the start of the year, has been among the hardest hit with over 90% of the Dream Sports’ revenue comes from the real-money contest as in FY24, they got a revenue of nearly INR 9600 crore according to the reports, which was driven mostly due to the home ODI World Cup 2023, where India did well, having gone through an unbeaten campaign before facing their maiden defeat in the final against Australia.

Dream Sports is now shifting its focus to smaller verticals. With the RMG business being phased out, they are expected to redirect the focus on the non-RMG ventures, which include strengthening the platforms such as Fancode and Sportz Drip, along with the other investments in Cricbuzz and Willow TV.

“I am writing this with a heavy heart. Declaring a platform illegal after years of validation, taxation, and judicial recognition isn’t just wrong—it is deeply unethical.” Smrita Singh Chandra, the former vice-president of Policy Communications of Dream11, shed light during a LinkedIn post.

It has also been indicated by the reports that the company may look to explore international opportunities of developing new formats for the foreign markets, as they have recently been adopted by competitors like the Mobile Premier League (MPL).

“There is addiction. The family's savings are lost. It is estimated that 45 crore people have fallen victim to it. More than ₹20,000 crore of our middle-class families' hard-earned money has been destroyed.” The Union Minister of Electronics and IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, reckoned. He felt that it would ban the online games, which could prove to be a ‘big problem for society, especially the middle-class youth.’

The bill has proposed that any person offering an online money gaming service in violation of the stipulated provisions will face imprisonment of three years or a fine that could be extended to INR 1 crore or both. It has also led to imprisonment of up to two years and a fine of nearly INR 50 lakh or both, for those parties that indulge in the advertisements.