PokerStars Signals Launch in India Coming Soon

World’s biggest online poker company PokerStars, owned by Amaya has its eyes set on India and rest of the USA market as part of their strategy to grow its business and indications suggest that PokerStars India maybe launching soon.

The Indian platform launch was slated to happen earlier this year but the launch got delayed and is now expected by the end of this year. Confirming the news, Amaya Group CEO Rafi Ashkenazi said, “India is quite an exciting market.”

He officially stated that the company hopes to launch its Indian variant sometime in the last two quarters of 2017.

According to Ashkenazi, India is an attractive market because of its huge population and the penetration of smartphones that exceeds even the United States. India’s Internet gambling industry is also expected to at least double within the next four years to $1 billion, with online poker commanding around a $150 million share of the market.

As expected, after the company’s annual meeting the shareholders also approved the recent proposed changes of re-naming the parent company to The Stars group and even relocate its headquarters to Toronto.

He said Amaya hopes eventually to capture at least half of the online poker market in the world’s largest democracy, which might soon be worth $150 million. He further quoted that, “It’s a booming country and we want to be there and we want to be there in time and make sure that we are as usual the market leader when it comes to poker,”.

Indian-origin Robin Chhabra, who was recently appointed as Chief Corporate Development Officer and reports directly to the CEO may play a significant role in this new development.

Ashkenazi is also looking to enter the brand in other states of America. It is estimated that poker has a market of about $2 billion a year in the states. Currently the game is legal in just three states i.e. Nevada, Delaware and New Jersey. However, there needs to be a proper online poker regulation in place before other likely states like California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois can start offering the game legally.