"Western Entrepreneurs Can Take a Lesson from the Indians"

A newspaper journalist recently wrote about PartlyGaming, which runs the poker website, PartlyPoker.com, while discussing the Internet gambling business, that it is based on a innovative business model which makes nothing, sells nothing, and profits solely from avarice.

PartlyGaming, makes a profit by charging customers a commission in order to play against other players or in tournaments. The company recently announced in London, its flotation on the Financial Time Stocks Exchange (FTSE). The stock is projected to go straight into the FTSE index along with other well established and prominent British institutions such as Barclays and Marks and Spencer.

Many employees of PartlyGaming’s will directly benefit from the flotation as well. The company employs about one thousand employees at a call center in India. The flotation will provide these employees a bonus of about 300,000 pounds in share options. At the same time that PartlyGaming announced the five billion pound London Stock Exchange flotation, this favorable news regarding the employees was also announced. Most staff members are located in Hyderabad, India, where the PartlyGaming call center is located. The employees number 1,100. The company headquarters are in Gibraltar, Spain, where some staff members are also located.

PartlyGaming is owned by American husband and wife team Anurag Dikshit and Vikrant Bhargava, two young graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (ITT). Bhargava, owns almost 15 percent of the company. He describes how when he and Dikshit finished their university studies at ITT, which is one of the best universities in India, it was common for their fellow graduates to head off to the United States, where they hoped to make it big in the dot com business. He explains how all his friends wanted to do something big but that he never imagined that he would be doing something as big as what he is doing. He explains that what motivates them is not the money but knowing that you have succeeded at what you are doing and enjoying it as well.

Just commenting that the company has done well is an understatement. To realize how great an understatement it is you need only take a look at company earnings which demonstrate its phenomenal growth. In 2002, PartlyGaming’s poker website reports earnings of five million pounds. By 2003, this amount had grown to 68 million pounds and by 2003 it had grown again to 304 million pounds. Now, in 2005, first quarter earnings alone are reaching 115 million pounds.

Industry analysts give credit to the shrewd business sense of its owners for PartlyGaming’s incredible success. PartlyGaming experienced a sensational rise in business after taking advantage of poker’s escalating popularity and launching a enormous advertising blitz at London’s underground train stations. Most visitors to this website are from the United States although players are attracted from all over the world. The poker website, PartlyPoker, is extremely popular in the United States. On the average, there are about 70,000 users playing online in opposition to each other at one time on the PartlyPoker website. Estimates for Britain peg the number online gamblers at 4.3 million, a number which is projected to increase. About four million pounds daily are wagered on Internet poker.