Gaming
Vodafone and Disney India collaborate for a gaming portal
MUMBAI: One of the leading telecom operators in India – Vodafone – is certainly looking to up its ante in terms of giving its subscribers the best in value added services.
Vodafone India recently teamed up with Disney India’s Interactive business, to launch Vodafone Games & Apps. The announcement comes soon after the launch of Vodafone Music and Vodafone Sports by the company.
“Vodafone believes that for data services to grow and get massive adoption, there needs to be a concerted effort to provide users a curated content experience for the popular categories like sports, gaming and music among others,” explains Vodafone India chief commercial officer Vivek Mathur. “Vodafone is able to bring together the best content in the mobile entertainment space and provide an offering unlike anyone else. We believe this unique offering will drive data consumption and hence the focus on the mobile content space.”
Vodafone Games & Apps powered by Disney India’s Interactive business is aimed at offering the customers premium games and apps on both feature and smartphones. Through this association, Disney India will furnish the complete content catalogue along with the portal for this offering.
“Our endeavour has always been to provide engaging games to existing and new users in India through multiple digital access points and in turn cultivate an active gaming culture in the country. Our association with Vodafone is a step forward in our strategic relationship with them and creates an additional destination for exciting games and apps for their users,” says Disney India VP & head – Interactive Sameer Ganapathy.
Via the Vodafone Games & Apps portal, subscribers will gain access to well-known Disney games such as Where’s My Water?, Where’s My Mickey?, Where’s My Perry?, Toy Story : Smash It!, Brave and Chennai Express among others. There will also be Disney Utility Apps including Mickey Planner, Donald Photo booth, Goofy Weather and more.
This is not the first such effort by a telco to distribute games as a service with subscription fee in India. Just earlier last month, Gameloft had entered into a similar deal with Idea to offer Java and Android games through its mobile website as part of Gameloft Club subscription.
Disney India (then DisneyUTV) and Electronic Arts had tied-up with Aircel to launch a new retail recharge card called ‘Aircel Pocket Internet Games’ in 2012. It was offering unlimited 2G data to those who subscribed to the plan that included over 1,500 games.
These non-HD games are smaller in size so that even people with 2G connections can download them fast and offer similar gameplay as the original app sold via Google and Apple stores.
Customers can avail Vodafone Games & Apps by visiting live.vodafone.in/games or sending a simple text message to 111. The HTML5 portal will apparently showcase the best content as per handset compatibility.
The companies say Vodafone Games & Apps has support for all major platforms, namely Android, Java, Symbian and Blackberry.
Having already forayed into music and sports (Star Sports), what encouraged Vodafone India to partner with Disney Interactive for gaming apps, Mathur expounds: “The response on music and sports services has been encouraging and we have seen healthy consumption of these services amongst our subscriber base. The gaming business is one of the largest drivers of revenue in the direct to consumer space and we believe that it has tremendous potential on our store as well. The TG is quite fluid and varied. We see all ages and genders play and download games and apps.”
Vodafone Games & Apps also offers user ratings and reviews, along with smart recommendation. The portal is also offering loyalty points, where customers receive points for every rupee spent, which can be redeemed on further apps and games.
If subscribers choose not to use credit cards to purchase the paid apps, carrier billing is available through the subscriber’s Vodafone account. Vodafone Games & Apps also features a ‘Try and Buy’ system, that lets customers sample content for free in two tries.
Subscribers can also avail of special price plans on the Vodafone Games & Apps portal. These include the ‘All you can eat value plan’, and ‘Premium content plan’. The former will grant access to six different game bundles, priced at Rs. 20, Rs. 25, Rs. 30, Rs. 49, Rs. 99 and Rs. 150. The ‘Premium content plan’ gives access to the ‘latest games’ at Rs. 50.
“We want to offer our customers the best gaming experience at various price points. Hence, we have various offers – Try and Buy, Free Games, Subscriptions, Full downloads and Value Packs,” reveals Mathur. “The user can sample the games on the free & try and buy model, then graduate into a value pack and then get initiated into subscriptions and full downloads as his gaming consumption and interest grows.”
A premium game will generally be made available on a discounted pack only after two weeks of its launch. The portal will have content from the leading games publishers and not be limited to the Disney library, the telco reveals.
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.
