hello viewers and welcome to another episode of the GI hoddle I'm with J deep chakravati who works as a gaming consultant and was involved in the creation of the first Indian gaming commission J deep thanks very much for being with us today thank you very much thank you for having me yeah it's a pleasure to have you on um we're going to talk a lot about the Indian market which you know a lot of operators we've spoken to when we've we haven't even mentioned India and we've sort of said what's the market that excites you most and they've all said India India could become you know absolutely huge so um looking forward to doing a bit of a market focus on on that region with you absolutely absolutely yeah to begin um if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and kind of how you ended up in this position where you know you're you're quite I guess an authority on the market yeah yeah so I'm just going to give a very brief background because I just don't want to bore your audience a lot so I've been in the industry for almost 2 1 years plus now started my career with lad Brooks uh way back in 2003 in Leicester in UK Midlands um I was studying MBA from Dem monford University and I was looking for part-time jobs and it just happened that I got introduced to by somebody uh with a supervisor in lad Brooks and that was my first entry in this in this industry and if you can if you can understand coming from a Indian uh background we don't really have gaming or gambling industry as such relevant in Indian Indian context so entering a lbook shop was a was like an experience for me because that was the first time when I entered a gambling shop over the years I I moved I was in UK for two years I finished my MBA then I moved to jalta where I was working for lat Brooks International which basically was taking care for lat Brooks bingo casino and uh online services the sports betting was still taking care from from the rers lane office and and poker obviously po bingo casino and poker was done from lbook gibralt office after that I walked with 32 red and uh overall I lived around four and a half years in jalta um I think I had enough of gibralta by that time so I decided to uh relocate and uh and luckily I got an opportunity in a uh a beautiful Paradise Island called micius so I end up going there I lived there for less than a year I worked for a software gaming company there and eventually in 2010 I came back to India and when I came back to India I was working for a company called Co games which is now been acquired by GVC it is it was at that point of time one of the principal supplier for software for Bingo so Bingo brand so they were powering more than 150 Bingo Brands so I worked with them for 2 2 and a half years and then I joined a uh very Niche slot game development company in Delhi which is the capital of India and and I worked there for 6 and a half years and then I worked for a company called necton which was listed in London Stock Market eventually it got rebranded as marot Technologies which still exists and I left that job a year and a half ago so uh so this has been more or less the you can say my journey has been from working with um you can say International gaming companies now what happened was that is when I entered when I came back to India uh a lot of uh my ex colleagues and people I met through events and all they were asking me about the Indian market and those days there was not much of Market to be very honest I'm talking 2010 there was not much happening but still there was some interest in the market so what happened was that is I started advising some of these companies as a as a individual consultant basis on their entry strategy for the market and and I worked with various Brands over the years on on that on that level and I'm not going to give you the name of some of these companies because I've got NDA signed with them but over the years I've launched I've launched multiple brands in the market and I've walked with multiple Brands which wants to enter in Emerging Markets so I've basically done as a Consulting part so when I a year and a half ago I basically decided that I want to do take on Consulting as a full-time role and that's what I've been doing now now one more interesting aspect that has happened was that is obviously big because of coid there has been a there has been a decline in Revenue collection across the board and India is not immune to that theow state governments that we have uh they are also struggling to generate new form of Revenue now one particular state where I was very much involved uh it's called megala it is one of the small states in northeastern part of India very beautiful state hilly State beautiful Hills and beautiful rivers and waterfalls so we basically formed India's first gaming commission there it was it's called meala gaming commission it was headed by a retired high court judge and I was appointed as a member of that gaming commission so we basically worked very closely with the bureaucrats as well as the government of the day to create this setup and uh unfortunately because of various other reason the government decided not to pursue that that area or not to pursue much on this area so they scrapped that commission two months ago but this is what I've been doing so because I've been involved with uh a lot of stakeholders over the years um including different state governments I am quite aware of what's going on in the real money gaming uh in in India as well as taxation that imp that can that is directly uh having an impact on India based gaming companies also so just shell I thought I'll share this with you absolutely yeah thank you for that walk through and I think the the particular transition from jalta to macius must have been a nice one no I can't complain to be very honest mean it it was gibralta is very nice means I lived five almost five years of my life there I made some very good friends and I love the place I love the vibe no matter where you go you just bump into somebody else from another gaming company it's that that small so that that was there but morous was again very beautiful I'm not sure if been but if you have not been you must visit that absolutely no um it was it was on the honeymoon short list we ended up at the Dominican Republic that's that's another issue but that's a beautiful place as well yeah yeah yeah true um so so with with everything you kind of all the experience that you you've kind of briefly walked us through you know you've over seen kind of you've seen a growth in in Indian gaming and basically my next question on paper sounds simple but I don't think it it is simple if I was to ask you for a brief overview of of Indian gaming right now I guess that's I don't know if you could say that's a loaded question because there's obviously loads of different areas both geographically but also by kind of vertical absolutely so I'm going to try to keep it little bit uh compact so that it it we don't run out too much time on this so basically the way the industry is right now is um so there is a legal gaming business in India which is mostly the skill gaming companies which is the Ramy poker and sports fantasy sports kind of companies and then you have a a growing Trend where Esports kind of companies are becoming quite popular Esports is becoming very popular within the young audience in India so that that that that's one aspect of it but I guess for most of your viewers the things that they will be interested in to to to focus on that part of the industry so the industry is basically you can say four parts of it there are four parts first part is let's say the lottery industry the lottery industry in India is first of all legal because the government uh some governments gives license to run and operate lotteries in that state uh just to give you an idea the state where I'm right now it is called West Bengal with the capital I'm sitting in a city called Kolkata uh the lottery sale here every day is almost 8 million to 9 million pounds per day that's that's a huge number and the turnover is huge significant the tax collected from this again these are information which is available in public domain if somebody wants to cross check the tax collected from lotteries from this particular state is like more than a I I think um a billion dollar or something like that or $900 millionar something like that so it's it's a it's a very very big uh business in India when it comes to Legal Lottery business so that is one part of of it the second part of it is uh there is a there were like any many other countries I think many years ago when there was no internet no telephone bookies still existed gamblers still existed punters were still there so what happened was that India was also almost same so we had punters we had bookies what happened when bet Fair came in the picture a lot of this uh traditional offline punters kind of moved from a local setup to a exchange driven model now that business still exist and it's a huge volume business the margins are low but the volumes are incredibly high and these businesses are basically mostly exchanges and they operate on uh on on credits and they have agents all over the country and again I am not particularly involved in this kind of business because I don't know who are the people who run it but I know this is exist because there are enough reports that are out there from KPMG to and uh Boston Consulting that everybody says that's a huge business that exist huge money is betting on every IPL cricket match that is there so that that that's one part of it the second part happened was few years ago uh I I would say seven eight years ago uh there was started getting interest from European and Asian based sports book operators now this guys are obviously not credit you have to pay in advance to place a bet and this uh they became quite popular over the years now the likes of um I can talk about maybe betway WX bet these are the brands which have done incredibly well over the years if if you go to any cricket match you will see betway as one of the principal sponsors in those matches and that is that is a reflection of how well their business is being done in Indian market so that is one thing and then the then you have obviously the uh kind of casinos also so you have an online some casinos also again these are all offshore gaming companies they don't they are not based in India they are not paying any tax in India and I am though I'm not a legal expert I'm sure they're violating some kind of laws which operate which is available in India but they are all offshore companies and they are operating in that format and the business they're doing is very good there are like I said the third category is mostly online casinos which are basically focusing on only Casino not sports book so that the these are you can say the broad way how it's been structured right now again companies are doing mostly they are available they're based outside India they have different ways to collect money they do different ways to attract customers so because they are of sure there is not much uh the government of the day can do to stop them but again there is a a growing Trend that the government is becoming serious nowadays to stop offshore gaming so that much I can say yeah absolutely so um probably a little bit related to that but as you say it won't affect anyone who's offshore uh if we were to talk about sort of Taxation policies and obviously recently there was um uh recently when you gave a panel I think the the the morning of of that panel um uh there was the 28% announcement and I think it's 28% of of turnover which is which has created you know a lot of you know a lot of discussion because well I guess any tax 38 person was on stake not on turnover was on stake well stake but even yeah so thanks for the the correction but 20% on stake is uh yeah imagine imagine anyone merely suggesting that in a market like the UK or a US state um could you maybe talk us through how the kind of uh those proposals but um broad tax policy in general is is affecting abut yeah the industry and potentially the future of the industry absolutely absolutely so see this this is a very recent phenomena so like like we were we were there in Amsterdam I think it's not even a month we were there in Amsterdam so this has been a quite recent phenomena I think the industry is still uh figuring out how to react uh the government's officials are also figuring out on how to implement this taxation but one thing is clear that taxation is at 28% and it is also clear that it will be taxed at the uh phase value so for example if I am a casino player and I go to a casino in Goa and I uh buy 1,000 uh chips I have to pay 28% on top of that as tax so I have to pay like 1,80 to get 1,000 rupees of chips something in those lines okay okay so that that part is very clear now now what what's going to what's happened is that is this is obviously being a big impact on India based gaming companies so India based gaming companies are going to be a big impact on this they again they are finding ways around their again they're going back to the government so I was involved in the process of discussion through the again through my association with the meala gaming commission and one thing we realized is that is the is the government um of the day which is which basically is the federal government or central government they are very keen to promote gaming but they are not very keen to promote gaming where Stakes are there they're more keen to promote gaming where which you can say like a tournament mode so Esports kind of a games or Esports is seeing a lot of backing from government and because it's a player it's a player versus player kind of a game where the platform is only earning aat platform fee they don't have problemay yeah and paying the paying the platform fee and all that paying the GST so they want to promote those kind of games yeah but what's happened is that is uh there have been multiple um discussions multiple interviews and from the Finance Minister to the finance officials finance ministry officials they have all come back and say that that from 1 of October this new tax will be implemented and the offshore gaming companies are also subjected to this new tax so they have also created a portal where the offshore gaming companies can come and register themselves and they need to pay a tax on the business they do in India based on this new tax structure so this is how how I think it has been uh uh structured right now but again there are little bit of ambiguity here because we still don't know how it will be implemented um in in Practical terms but first October is not very far so we will see how it impacts absolutely so much to really really kind of unpack there which which which you you've already sort of started doing there I mean interesting that um an interesting Dynamic that governments are sort of backing certain verticals and you know and less so others and um when you mentioned kind of offshore companies paying the tax like to actually Implement that you know is is not easy um and even like you said just the concept of 28% on stake so paying extra to deposit you know as as just someone who you know places Sports bets in in the UK it's just I can't can't really grasp that concept at all absolutely but I I you are obviously very young and I'm also not that old but there was a time in UK also there was stacks on Stakes I don't know if you you hear about this that was I think much in probably before 20 or something when I was in jalta and when I was living in jalta there were betting shops in jalta and there were still taxes on Stak so when you go and place a bet on a betting shop in jalta again I'm talking 20056 so it was almost 15 18 years ago you still had to pay taxes on Stakes but again this is one of the highest form of tax we still need to see how the offshore gaming companies are impacted with this what what mechanic M the government does to implement and and and ensures that companies are tax compliant but one thing is there that the companies which are based in India which is the Ramy poker and Delhi fantasy sports and Esports companies they are bound with to pay this tax and walk around this tax so they have to go back to their drawing board come up with new products or new ways to structure their business so that they are tax compliant and they paying the government 28% tax so it sounds like um you know the Indian market or markets plural you know are going through I guess an early stage in I guess what the evolution is of perhaps you know your typical Market perhaps every single Market goes through you know a similar kind of Journey um let's say an a goal in that journey is to have a fully regulated kind of mature sports betting Market which kind of you know we're we're we're off of now but let's say that happens um I wanted to ask you because you You' you've mentioned briefly in this interview and you you've emphasized in the past the amount of cricket betting there is if India has a a fully regulated one day mature sports betting Market can regulated Cricket betting challenge I guess maybe even football betting on a global scale because it'll have a lot of players right I I think right now the unregulated cricket betting is already challenging the football very honest yeah but but I one thing I'll just add here see India follows a federal structure very much similar to the US model where gambling and betting is a State subject now we have 2 full grown States right now and around eight union territories now which means that every state have the right to determine what they think is good for their player or their residence in that particular State now sometimes these smaller states which are usually the northeastern states or Goa these states are always because they are not big in size they don't have too much population they're always struggling in terms of Revenue generation so sometimes these states are usually some of these states are pioneers when it comes to implementing new policies and coming up opening up new new Industries like what we have seen in Goa 30 years ago Casino industry was opened up and uh I I'm not saying that was the only reason but that played a a very vital role in getting a lot of tourists going to Goa and today Goa is like one of the not one it is the most uh travel destination within India means more people go to Goa every year than anywhere else so again Casino industry have played a big role in that but it is not the only reason Goa has got beautiful beaches and Greenery and everything but it does play a role similarly sikim is another state which is a northeastern part of India state which is sandwi between China Bhutan and Nepal and they have casinos there and they have also seen an increase in tourists coming to their state so so so individual states decides how far they want to go in terms of setting up this businesses now for example I talked about lottery in India just imagine we talked about 9 million uh pound Lottery sale in one state which is West Bengal and there is another state which is called Kerala which is the most um Lottery plate state in India and I I again I might be wrong but their daily sales in terms of uh pounds will be like above uh like 12 13 million pounds so so but Lottery is still available only in four major states in India and there are and and some smaller States so probably it only covers 20% of the market so coming back to your point I do feel that there will be a time when the governments of the day will realize that how much revenue they are losing out with unregulated gaming and with offshore gaming and they will come up with a uh with with a model where gaming will be legal in India and you can place a bet in in India but it will be at a state level yeah it will not be a federal level so we will never have a system where one one country and every can play from anywhere it will never be like that just to add here uh Tim um so you know alcohol right now obviously in Western countries you will not find this is this concept but we still have some states in India where alcohol sale is banned MH so that doesn't mean that people are not drinking it's just they finding alternate ways to find alcohol which is also a problem because see if you if you allow alcohol you can get tax out of it and you are able to sell genuine alcohol in the Market Liquor in the market because if you are not allowing alcohol which means that people are paying more price for the same alcohol and sometimes they're getting dubious alcohol and every year we have this strategies where some people dies drinking adulterated alcohol and all that so again it's not a foolproof plan similarly in gaming also what we have seen is that is you have this flyby oper ators which comes in the market which takes money from the players they go away they have their weird payout rules weird promotion rules they don't so they don't follow the same standards that they would follow operating in a regulated market because they know IND the players don't have a forum to go but if the government does regulate then one they do earn tax and second the players gets a voice the player can go and complain to somebody that you know what I made a uh bet here they're supposed to give me this promotion they're not giving me or they're not like I have won 10,000s but they're not paying they're paying me like 500 pounds a week how is that fair to me but the players in India right now don't have that voice so I think what we are looking for the government is to one you should get tax this industry fairly that is also a very big point and you should also let players have the voice so that even because right right now with these offshore gaming companies they don't have the voice and I'm not saying everyone is like that there are some big Brands which are there and they are doing fairly but there are flyby operators also how you stop them absolutely um you beat me to the punch with the with the US comparison um but I think for a for a final topic um I'd like to see if we can maybe uh offer as much as we can offer some maybe practical advice for let's say um International companies looking to to maybe go into India see what this Indian market is all about and the US comparison is is the first part of that so I want to I want to pose you two sort of questions to to end with if you're an international company looking to go into India in in some way shape or form is it is it best to adopt a similar model to people entering the US that state byst state kind of model um and also a point you mentioned in in your panel in Amsterdam you said that there is quite there's a quite a superior product at the moment for kind of sports betting customers um could that be a little bit of a barrier to entry to a lot of companies who want to kind of I suppose not not just copy the same format but uh transition their platform to an Indian market and if it's if maybe what's normal in most markets isn't quite good enough is that going to maybe deter companies so those are my two s two prong question there no no absolutely so I I'll tell you see two things the companies uh say every company have a different strategy and they come up with their different ways they want to enter markets what I have seen and because I interact with a lot of companies and I was fortunate enough to meet a lot of people also because of my involvement with different events and as a speaker there what I've seen is that is there are wellestablished companies and I'm not I'm just giving you a name so that it kind of relates where I'm coming from so the likes of let's say ENT entain would a company like that if they want to enter the Indian market I think they would probably wait for the market to be fully regulated and they will go after state byst state kind of a model okay and and and and just to give you a very quick small analog it's just something different you know Walmart right wal so Walmart tried to enter the Indian market from 2003 onwards they had a office in India I there had couple of people working in India in those days a single brand uh multiple brand retail was not allowed that means that if I am a Gucci or a Prada I can open my store in India but I cannot be a Walmart selling multiple Gucci Prada different products so I can so that was not allowed in those days I think that that policy was changed if I'm not mistaken like five six years ago so Walmart waited 10 15 years for the policy to change and they waited they lobbied the government they met the government they said all the good things they said what is the benefit and eventually the government changed that rule now it's same thing comes to gaming there are companies which I know personally who are involved who are talking to the government of the day they are trying to convincing them that okay you know what this is the model we should do this is how it will help the country this is how we can generate tax so there is a model that is but again it will be happening state by state level so that's one part of it yeah second part is that is but there are some other companies which decided otherwise they said that you know what the market still exist there are millions of people out there we are now become the most popular popular country in the world with more than 1.4 billion people very good at making babies so we said okay you know what let's go in this market right now we don't want to wait for the market to be regulated we want to enter the market right now and the companies like like I said one exper betway they are all there in the market they're uh they're making a big uh revenue from this Market they are they're not waited for the market to be regulated so it's a company to company strategy that people have done it's not a uh it's I and again it depends on your company's risk profile it depends on what is your risk exposure you want to take and that's a decision companies will take means I can't guide them in that it is a individual company's decision now coming to your point I think uh what you said is correct the market because the mar one there was a almost 20 15 20 years of experience working with exchange type of models where primarily bet Fair driven or bet Fair API driven business and then you have this big sports book with with lot of trade ERS with lot of fancy bets coming in the market the experience of a sports better in India have significantly improved so if you are a new business and you want to enter the Indian market you need to have your game really up otherwise the players are now be mean so it's not the same player as 2015 in 2023 the players are much more educated now they know who is offering me 130 50% bonus what is the wagering on that they know what odds I getting on one particular match what I'm getting on this brand that brand so what I'm trying to say is that the player is an educated player now so for now to enter this Market as an offshore gaming company and particularly in sports you need to be really really good in your game and that good in your game means you need to have a kickass like a uh Sports petting product means that goes without saying means I I have been personally seen companies very very big companies good marketing budget very good people really talented people absolutely amazing marketing team but what they fail is the product is not good M they're able to get players but when the stickiness of the players are not there yeah so this is the big problem with uh companies mostly so what I believe is that is if you go back do your homework there is enough room but you need to be coming up with a very very good uh Sports product absolutely yeah product is king um no interesting point for sure um and overall thank you very much for for your time for your answers what I think even just from our sort of brief conversation is clear the more we talk about the Indian market the less I really feel like uh not that I know but there's just every topic brings a new question that needs answering you know it's it's see I'll tell you one thing Tim the market is evolving the what we have right now is just the tip of the iceberg because see it's a growing Market the more and more people are having disposable income they are finding new entertainment option earlier people were happy listening music now they are happy watching a music video now what's next so you first listen music then you watch video now they're saying okay now I have some money I what what do I do next okay they're going and playing a maybe a eight pool mini clip game you know they're buying chips for that so they're playing a pubg game they're playing a Call of Duty game so people are finding new ways of doing uh uh entertainment options and it only going to increase just to give you an idea I don't know if you aware of it yesterday uh actually not yester before you say we actually had uh one of our spacecraft got landed in Moon on the southern pole so India became the first country to do a soft landing on southern part of moon now that just to shows you that the kind of Technology iCal Revolution that is going on almost we have 1.1 million uh mobile connections 750 million plus smartphone users now imagine again n of almost 80% of them are not your target audience that goes without saying but even at a 10% level if you say that 10 15 million people that you have that's a very significant number of people that can give you a significant volume of business if you want to enter the Indian market m absolutely no there's uh plenty to Target but as as we've Chown plenty to talk about about how to do that and what best regulations uh suit these companies and and the players but uh J deep thank you very much for for your time for your answers and uh yeah really enjoyed chatting to you I'm sure we'll we'll hear more from you and we'll hear more from kind of the many states in India and their budg regulations as well thank you very much for having me Tim thank you very much have a good day bye-bye thank you and you too