Gaming
Jetsynthesys & Animeta partner for e-sports mega-event – GEPL
Mumbai: JetSynthesys’ first edition of the Global e-Cricket Premier League (GEPL), world’s largest team-based cricket e-sports and entertainment league, unfolded on Real Cricket 24 (RC 24), the leading mobile cricket simulation game (co-owned by the same company). To market this exciting property whose primary audience is Gen Z, Jet Synthesys partnered with Animeta, an innovative AI-powered creator tech company, to bring onboard creators and artists.
The main task at hand, to start with, was to create awareness and acceptance for the concept of e-Cricket, and then use that buzz to drive tune-ins to Jio Cinema, the exclusive streaming partner for GEPL. Given the huge popularity that cricket as a sport already has, the idea was also to diversify the audience profile beyond regular gaming and e-sports enthusiasts (120 M+ active users), and take it to viewers of cricket content on mobile (260 M+), with a significant proportion of GenZ audience.
JetSynthesys (the force behind GEPL) founder & CEO Rajan Navani shared his perspective, “Cricket came to us from the West but today, I’m proud to say that our Made-in-India Real Cricket™ and GEPL have set the stage for India exporting cricket esports to the world. Animeta helped us onboard the right influencers and employ the correct influencer strategy to maximize the impact of these creators.”
Commenting on the collaboration, GEPL CEO Rohit Potphode said, “GEPL stands as the largest eCricket league globally. In order to appropriately match its immense scale, we collaborated with Animeta- Brandstar, a specialized influencer marketing platform. This partnership allowed us to enlist renowned influencers spanning cricket, gaming, and entertainment domains, ensuring a broad reach across diverse audience demographics.”
The collaboration kicked off with the onboarding of 8 established mobile gamers, who were called the ‘Game Galvanizers’. Each was assigned a team to cheer for, as they seeded awareness about RC 24 and GEPL, driving excitement across their communities. The famous comedic creator-duo Funcho (Shyam and Dhruv) were onboarded as the ‘Series Galvanizers’, leveraging the star-power of these Gen-Z focused, culture moving, and cricket loving creators to attract a diverse young audience set to check out GEPL.
Animeta CEO Devdatta Potnis said “When you are trying to tap into a Gen Z audience, influencer marketing becomes an extremely important avenue, as social media is where this audience frequents daily. The approach was to tap into some key aspects across the whole spectrum of content habits that this audience has.”
To enhance the entertainment experience, Animeta brought on board four prominent rappers—ACE, Nasty Ninja, Yedha Anna, and 99 Side-to create the anthem ‘Find Your Glory’ for GEPL Season 1. Eight dynamic female influencers showcased the game’s broad appeal across genders, further diversifying GEPL’s target audience cohorts.
Animeta Sr VP of branded content and creator projects Biswamitra Ray stated “Selection of credible and relevant voices and high-relatability in the content is key to a campaign’s success. Whether it was for the social media posts made by the creators or the song composed specially for GEPL – we looked deeply into universal insights about the audience, whose attention we were trying to grab.”
The event featured a performance by the renowned EPR aka Santhanam Srinivasan Iyer, a rock and hip-hop rapper, and brought various creators and gamers on stage. Popular gaming creator Shreeman Legend hosted a fan meet attended by approximately 1000 fans, delighting the audience and creating lasting memories.
Gaming
Dream Sports sees 100 plus exits after gaming ban forces overhaul
Company splits into eight units as real money gaming law hits revenue.
MUMBAI: For a company built on fantasy leagues, reality has suddenly rewritten the rulebook. More than 100 employees have exited Dream Sports, the parent of Dream11, after the company reorganised its operations following India’s ban on real money online gaming. The shake up came after the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 came into force in August 2025, prohibiting games where users deposit money expecting winnings. The regulation struck at the heart of the fantasy gaming industry and dramatically affected Dream Sports’ core business, wiping out about 95 percent of its revenue and all of its profits.
In response, the Mumbai based company shifted into what chief executive officer Harsh Jain described as “startup mode”, splitting its operations into eight independent business units in December.
Around 700 employees were reassigned across these newly formed ventures based on their experience and interests. However, roughly 15 percent opted to leave the company.
A spokesperson for Dream Sports said many of those who exited were experienced professionals accustomed to running scaled businesses rather than early stage ventures.
“Since some of these employees were experienced with running high scale businesses and not startups, around 15 percent chose to leave and join other scaled companies or start ventures of their own,” the spokesperson said.
Despite the departures, the company noted that the attrition rate is only slightly higher than its earlier level of around 10 percent before the ban. Dream Sports now has close to 950 employees and is not currently hiring, choosing instead to focus on stabilising its existing workforce.
The restructuring has transformed Dream Sports from a fantasy gaming company into a broader sports entertainment platform. The eight units now operate independently, each focusing on different segments of the sports and technology ecosystem.
These include Dream11, sports streaming platform Fancode, sports travel service DreamSetGo, mobile game Dream Cricket and artificial intelligence initiative Dream Sports AI, which includes sports analytics platform Dream Play.
Other ventures include fintech product Dream Money, open source initiative Dream Horizon and the philanthropic arm Dream Sports Foundation.
As part of cost saving efforts, Dream Sports also relocated its headquarters from Bandra Kurla Complex to Worli earlier this year. The new office, called Dream Sports Stadium, brings teams from its various brands together under one roof to improve collaboration and operational efficiency.
Jain had earlier said the company removed bonus lock in timelines for employees hired in recent years, allowing those who wished to leave to exit with pro rata payouts.
“We want people who are fully into the startup mode and willing to work for it, and we will share that reward if it comes,” he said.
Founded in 2008 by Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth, Dream Sports was last valued at 8 billion dollars after raising 840 million dollars in 2021 from investors including Falcon Edge Capital, DST Global, D1 Capital Partners, RedBird Capital Partners, Tiger Global Management, TPG and Footpath Ventures.
The new gaming law has forced several companies in the fantasy gaming sector to either shut down or pivot their business models, signalling a significant reset for one of India’s fastest growing digital entertainment industries.
