In FY23, Games24x7 booked ₹1,988 crore ($207 million) in revenue from RummyCircle and My11Circle and still closed the year ₹199 crore in the red. Two years later, a single act of Parliament made the question of profit or loss irrelevant overnight, by banning the business it was built on.
The company that survived a 2012 court order shutting down its biggest state, a decade of bank refusals to touch its payments, and a tripling of its effective tax rate did not die of any of those things. It is now trying to survive the one event none of that prepared it for: a blanket national ban on real-money gaming, passed in August 2025, that erased the revenue line RummyCircle and My11Circle were built on.
Quick facts
| Company | Play Games24x7 Private Limited (Games24x7) |
| Founded | 13 December 2006, Mumbai |
| Founder(s) | Bhavin Pandya and Trivikraman Thampy (Co-Chief Executive Officers) |
| Businesses | RummyCircle (rummy), My11Circle (fantasy sports), U Games casual portfolio (Ultimate Teen Patti, Ultimate Rummy) |
| Latest disclosed FY revenue | ₹1,988 crore, FY23 (year to March 2023) |
| Latest disclosed FY profit/loss | Net loss of ₹199 crore, FY23 |
| Listed | Private — not listed on any exchange |
| Market value / last valuation | $2.5 billion (about ₹24,000 crore), reported as of March 2022 |
| Key shareholders | Founders Pandya and Thampy, Tiger Global Management, Malabar Investment Advisors, The Raine Group |
What they do
Games24x7 runs two real-money platforms that, until August 2025, made up the bulk of its business: RummyCircle, an online rummy site where players pay entry fees to compete for cash prize pools, and My11Circle, a fantasy sports app where users pick virtual teams against real cricket, football and kabaddi fixtures and pay to enter contests, with Sourav Ganguly fronting its marketing since the app’s 2019 launch. Alongside these it built a portfolio of free-to-play casual games under the U Games label, including Ultimate Teen Patti and Ultimate Rummy, which do not involve cash stakes and were designed to hold a broader, non-paying audience. The company had crossed 100 million registered users by March 2022, as reported by TechCrunch.
The origin
Bhavin Pandya, an electrical and computer engineering graduate of Purdue University, and Trivikraman Thampy, an aerospace engineer from IIT Bombay, met in the computer lab of New York University’s economics PhD programme in the autumn of 2005 — not studying, but playing games, Pandya at poker and Thampy at Mahjong, as recounted in Forbes India’s profile of the founders. Both were unhappy with a doctorate that felt, in Thampy’s words, “too much theory and less connect with the real world.” Pandya quit the fully-funded programme in early 2006 and returned to India. With $50,000 from a US angel investor, the two incorporated Play Games24x7 Private Limited on 13 December 2006 and launched free online rummy and chess. The insight was narrow but correct: India had a large latent base of card-game players with no legal, well-run place to play rummy — a game courts had already treated as one of skill — for money online, and the payments and advertising rails to serve them simply did not exist yet.
The struggle years
The free model did not work. Engagement was too shallow to build a business on, and Pandya has described personally calling friends to fill out rummy tournaments despite offering cash prizes, per Forbes India’s account. The 2008 financial crisis hit while the company was still pre-revenue; it survived only on more than $1.5 million pumped in by angel investors through 2011. Building the paid version was its own fight: Indian banks, wary of the legal grey zone around real-money games, refused to process payments for years, until CCAvenue and HDFC agreed to come on board around 2010–11, and Google and Facebook had to be persuaded that online rummy was a legitimate, advertisable industry rather than gambling. Tiger Global backed the company in 2011 after what Forbes India describes as months of rejection from other venture investors. Then, in 2012, a Madras High Court verdict targeting offline rummy operations forced Games24x7 to shut down in Tamil Nadu — a state that, per the same Forbes India account, had been generating roughly a quarter of its revenue. It was the first time regulation, rather than competition or cash flow, nearly ended the company, and it pushed Games24x7 to diversify beyond rummy into casual games and, later, fantasy sports.
The turning point
The event that reshaped the entire industry, Games24x7 included, was a change in how the government taxed it. From 2017, gaming platforms had paid 18% GST on their own commission or “platform fee” — the cut they kept from each contest, not the full amount players put at stake. On 1 October 2023, the Centre moved to a flat 28% GST charged on the full face value of every deposit and every bet placed, as the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) applied it, reported by Outlook Business. The headline rate roughly doubled, from 18% to 28%, but the tax base multiplied many times over, since it now covered the entire pool of money re-entering the platform on each re-bet, not just the company’s margin. The DGGI followed the rule change with a retrospective demand: showcause notices calculated on cumulative bets of over ₹71,000 crore placed on Play Games24x7 and its affiliated platforms since 2017, arriving at a GST demand exceeding ₹20,000 crore, as reported separately by Outlook Business and Zee Business in October 2023. Games24x7, alongside Head Digital Works, Baazi Networks and the E-Gaming Federation, challenged the retrospective application in court, arguing the new base should apply only from October 2023 onward. On 27 May 2026, the Supreme Court ruled against the industry, holding that gaming platforms were suppliers rather than mere intermediaries and that the changes were clarificatory rather than new law — validating retrospective demands and leaving the sector, per Business Today’s reporting on the ruling, facing a combined tax exposure of more than ₹1 lakh crore.
The money behind it
Games24x7 built its capital base gradually rather than through a marquee mega-round. Angel money got it through the 2008 crash; Tiger Global Management came in as its first institutional backer in 2011 and stayed on across subsequent rounds. The company reached unicorn status in March 2022, raising $75 million at a $2.5 billion valuation in a round led by Malabar Investment Advisors, with existing backers Tiger Global and The Raine Group also participating, according to TechCrunch and YourStory’s reporting on the round at the time. Each backer served a different function: Tiger Global’s early conviction unlocked later venture interest after years of rejection; Malabar’s 2022 lead priced the company as a genuine unicorn during India’s peak funding cycle; and The Raine Group, a media and sports-focused bank-cum-investor, aligned with Games24x7’s heavy reliance on cricket and fantasy sports marketing. The company has not publicly disclosed a cumulative total raised across all rounds, and no figure for that could be verified from primary reporting, so it is left out here rather than estimated.
How it makes money
The business model is a platform fee, not a betting operation, and this distinction is the part people get wrong. In both RummyCircle cash tables and My11Circle contests, players’ entry fees pool into a prize fund that is paid back out to winners; Games24x7’s own revenue is the commission it deducts on entry, commonly called the platform fee or “rake” in rummy, and the entry-fee margin in fantasy contests — not the pool itself, which the company does not get to keep. Costs run in two large buckets: prize payouts, which scale with how much money enters the system, and customer acquisition, which does not scale down easily. In FY23, advertising and promotional spending alone was ₹1,421 crore against ₹1,988 crore of revenue — a rise of about 62% year-on-year, as reported by Entrackr — because cricket-season marketing and influencer-led fantasy sports campaigns are expensive and continuous. The GST change compounded this arithmetic rather than simply taxing profit: because the 28% levy fell on the full amount re-entering the platform through repeat play, not on the company’s commission, it directly shrank the pool available to be paid back to players and spent on growth, squeezing margins even before the 2025 ban made the entire model illegal.
The numbers
Games24x7’s financial disclosures, filed with the Registrar of Companies, run through FY23; no later full-year results had been publicly filed as of this writing, and the company’s FY26 numbers — the first full year to carry the effect of the August 2025 ban — are not yet due. All figures below are consolidated, in ₹ crore, as reported by Entrackr and corroborated by Forbes India for FY21.
| Fiscal year | Revenue (₹ crore) | Profit / (Loss) (₹ crore) |
| FY21 (year to March 2021) | 1,573 | 110 (profit) |
| FY22 (year to March 2022) | 1,169 | (282) |
| FY23 (year to March 2023) | 1,988 | (199) |
The pattern is a company that was solidly profitable in FY21, fell sharply into loss in FY22 even before the GST change (revenue itself dropped 24% that year, per Entrackr’s reporting, reflecting the post-pandemic normalisation of gaming demand and rising customer-acquisition costs), then grew revenue 70% in FY23 on the back of tripled marketing spend while still losing money, cutting the FY22 loss by 29% in the process. No verified FY24 or FY25 figures could be sourced from primary filings-based reporting; secondary aggregator estimates exist but are not corroborated by a second independent source, so they are excluded here rather than presented as fact.
Where the money comes from
Games24x7 does not publicly break out revenue between RummyCircle and My11Circle, so a precise current split cannot be verified and is not presented here. What the record does show is how concentrated — and how fragile — that mix has been at different points in its history. In the early 2010s, Tamil Nadu alone accounted for roughly a quarter of the company’s revenue, per Forbes India’s account of the founders’ telling, a concentration that turned a single 2012 state court ruling into an existential threat and pushed the company to diversify into casual games and, later, fantasy sports. That instinct to spread risk across formats — rummy, fantasy sports, and free-to-play casual titles — is precisely what the company is repeating now: since the 2025 ban, its public activity has shifted to a 24% stake in stock-broking platform Wiseowl Securities (parent of the Butterfly Broking app “TIQS”), for ₹9.1 crore plus an ₹18 crore short-term loan, disclosed in regulatory filings reported by Entrackr in March 2026. The surprise is less about geography than about category: a company built entirely on cards and cricket is now, by necessity, part-owner of a stockbroker.
The risks
Three risks sit over the business, and none of them are hypothetical. First, the regulatory risk has already materialised in the most complete way possible: the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, passed by Parliament on 21 August 2025 and covered by Wikipedia’s summary of the legislation, does not tax or restrict real-money gaming, it prohibits offering it, facilitating it, or advertising it, and bars banks from processing payments for it — removing the core RummyCircle and My11Circle revenue line by law rather than by market forces. Second, the retrospective tax risk did not disappear with the ban; it runs backward. The Supreme Court’s 27 May 2026 ruling upheld 28% GST as applying retroactively, and Games24x7’s own DGGI notice — over ₹20,000 crore, against cumulative bets of ₹71,000 crore-plus since 2017, as reported by Outlook Business — is now a live liability against a company whose entire FY21–FY23 revenue over three years does not add up to that sum. Third, there is execution risk in the pivot itself: moving into free-to-play formats and adjacent regulated businesses like stock broking is, by The Tech Portal’s own framing of the shift, a move into “comparatively less profitable” territory that “may not fully replace the revenue lost from its real-money business,” meaning even a successful diversification could still leave the company permanently smaller.
The takeaway
Games24x7 spent nineteen years proving it could out-build, out-market and out-litigate every threat to its business except one: a legislature that decided the business itself should not exist. Court rulings on “skill versus chance,” which the company had won often enough to build a $2.5 billion valuation on, turned out to be a defence against the wrong branch of government. The lesson for any founder operating a business whose legality rests on an interpretation, not a settled law, is not to wait for the interpretation to be challenged — it is to build the alternative revenue line while the interpretation still holds, not after Parliament closes the question for good.
Frequently asked questions
What does Games24x7 do?
Games24x7 is an Indian gaming company, founded in 2006, that operated RummyCircle (online rummy) and My11Circle (fantasy sports) as real-money platforms, alongside a portfolio of free-to-play casual games under the U Games label, until India’s 2025 ban on real-money gaming forced it to suspend those cash-based formats.
Who founded Games24x7 and when?
Bhavin Pandya and Trivikraman Thampy, who met as economics PhD students at New York University, founded the company on 13 December 2006 as Play Games24x7 Private Limited, starting with $50,000 in angel funding, as detailed in Forbes India’s profile of the founders.
Why did the 2023 GST change hurt more than a simple rate increase?
Because it changed what was taxed, not just the rate. Before October 2023, the 18% GST applied only to the platform’s own commission. From October 2023, 28% GST applied to the full amount staked on every bet, including money that re-entered the system from previous winnings, sharply increasing the effective tax burden relative to the company’s actual revenue, as described in Outlook Business’s reporting on the DGGI’s calculation method.
What happened to Games24x7 after the 2025 real-money gaming ban?
Parliament’s Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025, banned real-money gaming outright from August 2025. Games24x7 suspended cash contests on RummyCircle and My11Circle, cut close to 400–500 employees — variously reported as up to 70% of its workforce — across two rounds in 2025, per Outlook Business and The Tech Portal, and began diversifying, including taking a 24% stake in stock-broking platform Wiseowl Securities in March 2026.
Is Games24x7 profitable today?
Its last publicly disclosed full-year result, FY23, showed a net loss of ₹199 crore on ₹1,988 crore of revenue. No audited figures for FY24, FY25 or the ban-affected FY26 were available as of September 2026, so its current profitability cannot be verified from primary sources.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Forbes India, “Games 24×7: How Bhavin Pandya and Trivikraman Thampy turned wild cards into a winning hand” (undated profile, accessed September 2026)
- TechCrunch, “India’s Games24x7 valued at $2.5 billion in new funding,” March 2022
- YourStory, “Games24x7 raises $75M led by Malabar Investment at $2.5B valuation, becomes unicorn,” March 2022
- Entrackr, “Games24x7 scale shrinks 24% in FY22, slips into losses,” November 2022
- Entrackr, “Games24x7 crosses Rs 2,000 Cr income in FY23; controls losses,” June 2024
- Business Standard, “Games24x7 looks to keep users engaged despite heavy GST on online gaming,” August 2024
- Outlook Business, “GST for online gaming players calculated on actual bets placed,” October 2023
- Zee Business, “DGGI sends Rs 28,000 crore GST notice to Dream 11; Play Game 24/7 slapped with Rs 20,000 crore GST fine,” October 2023
- Wikipedia, “Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025,” accessed September 2026
- Outlook Business, “My11Circle & RummyCircle parent Games24x7 to cut 70% workforce after India’s real-money gaming ban,” September 2025
- The Tech Portal, “Games24x7, MPL and PokerBaazi start large-scale layoffs as India’s ban on real-money gaming takes effect,” September 2025
- Inc42, “After RMG ban, Games24x7 to layoff 500 employees,” September 2025
- Business Today, “Supreme Court upholds 28% GST on online gaming; ₹1 lakh cr tax burden looms,” May 2026
- Entrackr, “Exclusive: Games24x7 to acquire 24% stake in stock broking app Wiseowl’s TIQS,” March 2026
- Wikipedia, “Games24x7,” accessed September 2026
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