No global expansion plans, focus on India’s growth:Dream11’s CEO Harsh Jain

“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,” he said.

Jain claimed that Dream11 currently has around 220 million users in India and still sees more room to grow.

“We don’t allow non-Indians to play. We only allow Indians. Every year, we have been able to grow. We have been operational for the past 16 years. After 15 years, we had 150 million people on Dream11. Last year, we added 55 million more users to the platform. The growth and depth of this market is unbelievable,” he said.

A majority of users on the platform are between the ages of 25 and 60 and hail from smaller towns. Only 28 per cent of them belong to the country’s Tier-I and Tier-II cities.

This comes at a time when Indian real-money gaming companies are grappling with regulatory challenges and a new 28 per cent blanket goods and services tax.

According to Jain, the company is also bullish about integrating artificial intelligence (AI) to bolster its operations.

“Sports is an area where we can deeply use AI because the availability of sports data is good. We have set up an innovation centre in partnership with Columbia University in the US where we are working on machine learning, reinforcement learning, and I think we have a lot to do in AI and sports,” Jain said.