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India’s sole listed gambling company Delta Corp is on the verge of selling its online gaming subsidiary Deltatech Gaming to Canada-based Clairvest Group’s Indian online card gaming subsidiary Head Digital Works.
The Delta Corp board last Thursday (February 20) approved the sale of an initial 51 percent of its wholly-owned Deltatech Gaming venture to the Clairvest subsidiary for a total consideration of 4.91bn rupees ($56m).
Deltatech Gaming is the operator of leading online poker platform Adda52, which it acquired in 2016 for less than one third of that price.
Head Digital Works runs an online poker and rummy platform for more than 75m users under the brand “A23”, with A23’s online poker platform launching last October.
The deal now goes to Delta Corp shareholders for approval in an extraordinary general meeting on March 21, with the sale to be completed on April 6, the filing said.
Deltatech Gaming and Head Digital Works are then expected to merge in a process to be completed by June 2026 after receiving approval from the merging companies’ boards and the central government’s company law tribunal.
However, Delta Corp will acquire some 5.7 percent of Head Digital shares in two tranches, indicating its interest in retaining an online gaming presence despite years of instability after a massive increase in the goods and services tax (GST) for the gaming sector.
Head Digital Works CEO Deepak Gullapalli said the merger brings together his company’s pioneering real-money gaming operation with the high-visibility Adda52 brand.
“Adda52 has been a leader in online poker in India and has an excellent platform and a strong user base,” he said.
“This transaction will help grow our poker business and help us create a leading diversified, card-based gaming platform in India.”
The transaction is notable for the expansion of Clairvest’s influence in the Indian market after the company’s failed campaign for a casino licence in Wakayama, Japan, in 2022.
The Delta Corp-Clairvest deal would become the second-largest in India’s online rummy and poker skill gaming segment, following Nazara Technologies’ acquisition of Moonshine Technology’s Pokerbaazi platform for 9.82bn rupees in September, the Business Standard daily reported on Friday.
Last February, Delta Corp divested its unprofitable majority holding in land-based casino operator Deltin Nepal for 800m rupees.
The deals follow several bodyblows to Delta Corp after the central government required the gaming industry to pay the maximum 28 percent on initial deposits across the online and land-based sectors, a decision amounting to a softened gaming volume tax that still shook the industry to its core.
Delta Corp was forced to litigate, defending against almost $3bn in delinquent tax notices amid falling share prices and going concern fears.
The central government later backtracked, with the GST Council — a mix of central and regional government finance officials — moving to strike out de facto retroactive tax claims following the change.
But the GST is also subject to more fundamental claims of harm, with the Supreme Court of India to continue hearing next month a consolidated lawsuit filed by various gaming industry appellants against the central tax authorities.
