“Well, I’ve done this for more than a decade now. If things go south, I guess we’ll all be out looking for other jobs—with a chunk of my life potentially accounting for nothing,” he said. “But, I hope that we’ll all be alright.” Exactly 22 days after that, the central government of India abject-banned the industry.
The past week was a momentous one for all of us covering India’s online gaming industry. As we—company executives, lawyers, policy consultants and journalists—went through the proposed law to ban the likes of Dream11, RummyCulture, My11Circle and Mobile Premier League, there was one sense that came out loud and clear: this wasn’t a negotiation tactic.
In the past four days, there was a gradual learning curve. At one of the ministry briefings, a top government official told us journalists that the centre had estimates on good faith that the amount of money lost in playing fantasy sports, rummy and poker online went above ₹20,000 crore every year.
“They say that they have over 50 crore people playing ‘games’ on their platform. In truth, each of them are designed so that their algorithms first give you penny victories, then get you addicted, and subsequently make you lose thousands. There is no exception: any story that says otherwise is a marketing campaign,” one of the many officials I met over the past four days said.
A second official raised an even more fundamental question. “Is this any different from satta (gambling), really? Say there’s a cricket match tomorrow, and you decide to use a hundred bucks to ‘select’ the best player in the country in your team. The player has a bad day and gets out for a duck, and you lose all your money. Now tell me two things—what skill did any of this need you to have, and how is this any different from a blind gamble?”
While I’m sure that the range of arguments will continue to broaden and the online gaming saga is far from over, there’s one key learning to take from here that may not have been spoken of enough: over-using the judiciary to circumvent governance is just as bad as the idea of an industry valued at nearly $25 billion being wiped out in a single week.
Mint on Thursday ran a full page of stories, alongside insights from union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, the IT secretary S Krishnan, and more. If my little story here got you interested, here’s a full list of stories for you to read if you want to get to know exactly what happened here:
Tuesday, 19 August: The Cabinet approves a potential law to ban the online money gaming sector
Wednesday, 20 August: The industry writes to Home minister Amit Shah, lawyers state that a new court battle is inevitable, and questions are raised around a mass culling of jobs. Also, influencers and investors get wary of the way forward, as the bill clears the lower house of the Indian Parliament without protest.
Thursday, 21 August: The law clears the upper house of Parliament amid some protest, as the industry starts exploring how a ‘pivot’ might work for them. Many companies also start shutting down their core products.
Friday, 22 August: The President offers her assent to the bill, leaving the government only to formally notify the bill and turn it into law. Penal clauses range up to ₹1 crore, and five years in prison.
Saturday, 23 August: S Krishnan, the IT secretary of India, tells my colleague Jatin Grover and I that “there is no intention to go after any particular entity.”
Prepping for Semicon
Jatin and I also spoke at length with Krishnan on the way forward for India’s semiconductor industry. As part of this conversation, there was one area that we all agreed upon—launching only fabs won’t help India’s case.
Let me break this down in a little more detail. When Taiwan started making breakneck progress thanks to Morris Chang (reminder: do read Chip War by Chris Miller), the venerable TSMC of today did not get built in a day. Instead, the number of ‘fabs’ (which is what semiconductor chip manufacturing factories are called) still remain few, and countable by hand.
What truly grew as a result of Taiwan’s push for chipmaking is the entire ecosystem—this includes sophisticated machines, gases, chemicals and many other aspects. Today, standing just over a week away from India’s fourth national semiconductor conference, Krishnan—who is one of the most vital people steering India’s semiconductor push ahead—told us that this is exactly what we’ll try to build going forward.
Our full interview also captures core data from what the government has spent on chips in the past four years, and what more is needed going forward.
Much ado over AI
Not a single week goes by when there’s no fuss over AI. This week, my colleague Jas Bardia spotted a rather interesting trend: that of how companies are applying their own streaks of creativity to find business opportunities—at a time when AI has taken over even our dinner conversations.
Jas brings first-hand details from the likes of Coforge, Persistent, Mphasis and Sonata—all among India’s top 20 tech firms at the moment. The insights are rather interesting especially if you are an investor who’s bullish on India’s tech services industry.
Interestingly, Jas and I also crunched a bunch of numbers and found a rather interesting statistic—as far as venture capital is concerned, Indian startups have raised only 0.3% the amount of money as what US startups have, in advanced stages of development.
Some more digging led us to a harsh truth: even amid a government push, India’s AI industry is potentially threatened by a big risk. Yet again, a lack of initiative in investing heavily on research can potentially make India once again dependent on the likes of China, the US, and some European entities.
It’s imperative that we act now, even if the flow of capital does not jump overnight. Or, are we getting something wrong here? Is frugality supposed to be everything?
Vodafone India on the anvil
A cracker of a piece from my colleague Jatin Grover this week underlined the sheer size of the plight that telecom operator Vodafone-Idea finds itself in. Amid all the ruckus, the Department of Telecommunications has now written to the Prime Minister’s Office, seeking feedback for the way ahead.
The reason: Vodafone, after failing to pay its previous dues, sold shares to the Centre—which now holds 49% of it. But, two years since then, things have gotten worse, and Vodafone owes the government of India close to $23 billion.
Will the government once again step in to help it survive? Vodafone leadership says at this rate, the operator will tap out of India in less than a year—leaving India as a telecom duopoly if that truly happens. The government has shown willingness to avoid that, but financially, Vodafone almost seems to be at its end.
In other news: A cheaper ChatGPT, a new Pixel
Earlier this week, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT ‘Go’, which costs ₹399 per month. It is a cheaper, slightly pared-down version of ChatGPT Plus, and straight off, everyone’s suddenly gone gaga over it. Much like the many generational tech shifts we’ve already lived through (the reduction of PC prices, the democratization of smartphones, and the rise of free software are the top three), it now appears to be time for AI services to go mainstream. Will Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini and the likes follow suit, too?
While that remains to be seen, what I can tell you is that the new Google Pixel 10, powered by the latest version of the Gemini Nano AI model, has hit the Mint desk. Next week, you’ll read from us on if the new version of the Pixel 10 series is ready to roar—or is more of the same as last year. They say smartphone innovation has slowed down… or has it?
Transformer by Mint is a weekly newsletter that brings India’s most important and interesting technology updates under one umbrella. As the world transforms with every day of innovation, Transformer will keep a tab on the impact that technologies will make in each of our lives. Published every week, the newsletter brings some of India’s tech landscape’s most insightful coverages until date.