CA Nitin Kaushik, a chartered accountant and financial critic, wrote on social platforms that Dream 11 “is not a unicorn, but a time bomb with 450 million losers”. He stressed that the Indian Government ‘ s attack on the genuine gold platform was not a policy mistake but one of the most important public health interventions in recent years.
Prior to the enactment of the Internet Games Act in India, Dream 11, once valued at over $8 billion and with more than 260 million users, had been promoted as a successful example of dream sports. Kaushik points out, however, that its business model is based on the loss of users: India loses 450 million people each year in online games, with a cumulative loss of more than Rs. 200 billion (approximately Rs. 16.2 billion) and most of the victims are young income groups from small towns.
The so-called trade unicorns are squeezing the marrow on the flesh and blood of all the scattered. “It is true that hundreds of thousands of families have been broken up by advertising,” Kaushik cites 47 cases of carnival suicide in Tamil Nadu between 2019 and 2024 and the tragedy of the bankruptcy of a Mumbai businessman who lost Rs. 120 million.
In response to critics accusing the policy of silencing innovation, Kaushik countered that the so-called innovation was “absorbed of gambling with technology”. He listed the risks, including the link between fraud, money-laundering and terrorist financing, warning those platforms to empty the wallets of the Indian people like digital casinos.
“The Government could have continued to levy taxes but opted to protect the mental health and financial stability of citizens. This saved millions of people from debt, despair and even worse.” He added that global precedents in the United States, China and Europe demonstrated that India ‘ s position was consistent with international anti-gaming disguised as a game.
The Federal Government of India has passed a new game bill that separates skill-based electric competition from betting platforms. This has led to large-scale lay-offs and collapses of the game start-ups that depend on the real gold to survive. Experts said that the industry was experiencing a big shuffle and that only a truly skill-based platform could survive and pave the way for a healthier digital game.