or a company that cast its business plans on the basic human frailty of flirting with lady luck, Playwin left nothing to chance. That�s the consensus that most industry watchers have arrived at roughly three years after Playwin Infravest (now Pan India Network Infravest) made its foray into the online lottery business, back in March 2002. Three years that have seen the Subhash Chandra-promoted Essel Group company survive the odds of mounting competition and governmental vicissitudes to not only stay at the top of the pile, but to emerge as the lone recognisable face of online lotteries in India. Small wonder Playwin accounts for more than 50 per cent of the Rs 3,000-crore turnover of the domestic online lottery business.

This, of course, wasn�t a scenario that many would have forecast in early 2003. Back then, spurred by Playwin�s early appeal and buoyed by the thought of capitalising on the estimated Rs 50,000-crore domestic paper lottery market, a whole host of big Indian corporate entities had announced their intentions of getting into the online lottery space (the market has shrunk to Rs 35,000 crore since then). These included Essar Telecom, Shapoorji Pallonji group�s Forbes, Group Apollo, Modi Enterprises, the Videocon Group and PK Mittal�s Ispat group. Growth would come from converting the paper lottery player to online, and the online lottery market would touch the Rs 15,000-crore figure by 2006, the reasoning went. ... more