Dream11 seeks SEBI nod to launch stock-broking and wealth platform

New Delhi: Dream11, the fantasy sports company, is trying to reinvent itself as a stock-broking and wealth platform after India’s ban on real-money gaming erased almost all of its income. 

The company has applied to enter India’s stock broking business and is seeking regulatory clearance from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), as per a Mint report.

The pivot comes after Parliament passed an online gaming law in August and September 2025 that outlawed real-money games, including paid fantasy sports contests, on the grounds of financial and psychological harm to users. 

Dream11 immediately suspended cash contests, and with that, “95% of revenue being gone,” chief executive Harsh Jain said in August. 

He called the moment an existential shock: “The only way to deal with 95% of your revenue being gone is to build new products that you can monetise in the future.”

Dream11 is now positioning stock trading as a “natural adjacency,” leveraging a claimed base of roughly 260 million registered users it built during its fantasy cricket and fantasy sports peak. 

The company wants to channel that user pool into equities, wealth and investing, areas that are still under-penetrated in India. Only about one in 12 Indians is currently registered with the National Stock Exchange (NSE), and less than half of those actually trade actively. 

Internally, the plan sits under a new banner called Dream Money. The idea: become a low-cost, high-volume broker and wealth product for India’s young, already transacting, already gamified user base, essentially chasing the same mass-retail investor that made firms like Zerodha, Groww and Angel One dominant. 

Dream11 has already poured more than a decade of capital into user acquisition and engagement. The group, last valued at around $8 billion and having raised over $1.5 billion since 2008, is now trying to convert that attention into financial services revenue after walking away from paid fantasy contests, sponsorship-heavy sports marketing and even certain high-profile cricket tie-ups. 

Dream11 has already shifted to a free-to-play, ad-supported model to keep its app alive after the ban, and is trying to build alternative revenue streams without fighting the government in court. 
Unlike some rivals in gaming who are preparing legal challenges, Dream11 has said it will not contest the ban and will instead “monetise in the future” through new lines of business.