Harsh Jain, the co-founder of Dream Sports, the parent company of embattled real-money gaming major Dream11, has ruled out any layoffs at the sports technology company following the government's blanket ban on real-money games (RMG).
"We're not interested in doing any layoffs. All the talent here is safe," Jain said in an interview with Moneycontrol on August 25.
"We are interested in building with this talent to dig ourselves out of this hole. The only way to deal with 95 percent of your revenue being gone is to build new products that you can monetise in the future. That will always start with talent," he said.
On August 22, Dream11 halted all paid contests on its fantasy sports platform and shifted entirely to free-to-play online social games. This move was prompted by India's new gaming law that prohibits online money games, which are games where a user makes a deposit, directly or indirectly, with the expectation of earning winnings on that deposit.
95 percent of the company's revenues and 100 percent of its profits currently originate from these cash-based contests, which are now deemed illegal.
Jain said the Mumbai-based firm currently has significant internal demand for talent across its existing businesses, including the sports content and commerce platform FanCode, sports experiences platform DreamSetGo, mobile game development unit Dream Game Studios, and fintech venture Dream Money, as well as for new products the company plans to develop in the future.
Jain added that Dream Sports has sufficient cash reserves to maintain its talent pool and run operations for a couple of years, which he believes is more than enough. Dream Sports had reported operational revenue of Rs 6,384.49 crore for the financial year 2023 (FY23), up from Rs 3,841 crore in FY22.
The Dream Sports chief compared the company’s situation 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," he said.
Jain added that if any of the products succeed, Dream Sports’ distribution modes allow them to distribute it “widely overnight and hyperscale it.”
Read: Dream11 parent won't fight Indian government over real-money gaming ban, says co-founder Harsh Jain
Focus on AI
Going forward, the company plans to concentrate all its efforts on sports-related opportunities in India using artificial intelligence (AI), with a special focus on 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,” Jain said. “We will start again to solve these problems for Indian sports fans.”
Read: Dream11 parent forays into wealth tech after gaming ban, pilots new FD and gold investment app
"We have 260 million users. We have a brand that's loved and trusted by a lot of people. We have an amazing talent pool with us and we have some capital that will help us get to product market fit for a lot of the ideas we are pursuing now," Jain added.
Dream Sports will also consider expanding to international markets, but will continue to prioritise India, he said.
"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," Jain said.
Founded in 2008 by Jain and Bhavit Sheth, Dream Sports was last valued at $8 billion when it received $840 million by way of funding from a clutch of funds led by Falcon Edge, DST Global, D1 Capital, Redbird Capital, Tiger Global, TPG, and Footpath Ventures in November 2021.
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