Wednesday, Nov 03, 2004
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By P. Vikram Reddy
HYDERABAD, NOV. 2. Even as the shadow of the U.S. presidential election is cast on outsourcing to countries such as India, the business of providing software solutions or back office support to yet another relatively unknown vertical of `e-gaming' seems to hold out much potential and promise. Already a few smaller players have made an entry in Pune, Gurgaon, Noida, Chennai and Bangalore. Besides one small player, there is also a major player offering tech support services and back office operations from Hyderabad, which is already employing as many as 750 people (projected at 2,000 by 2005 end). Technology, in this case the Internet, has made it possible for land based gambling to climb on to the web. And even as PC penetration and high-speed connectivity increased globally, it helped `e-gaming' to spread from only Casino (card game variations), to games like poker (variants) and Bingo. Globally the e-gaming industry is divided into two segments `games', and `sportbooks'. It is a multi-billion dollar business with countries such as Canada, Dominican Republic, Gibraltar, Antigua, Curacavo (Carribean), Isle of Man, Australia, and some Nordic countries giving licences for `games' also. In the U.K., where gambling is a big business, measures are underway for `deregulation' to help companies get licence within the U.K. itself. At present, companies operating in the U.K. get licences (for games) from Gibraltar. In India, services are confined to providing support services such as customer care, transaction processing, technical support, software development and maintenance. The companies do not transact, but only process transactions, industry sources explain. The Bangalore-based B2K Services supports games software and hardware devices of possibly the second largest games software company in the world. The Chennai-based IQL Software offers software services for international betting and call centre management software. But the real big rush is yet to start.
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