Two young Indians cash in on online poker

Vijay Dutt

London, June 3, 2005

Two Indian technology graduates, a former Internet porn baron and her husband are about to become
dollar billionaires as a result of the phenomenal growth in online poker. After only seven years in
operation, the four owners of the world's largest Internet poker company, PartyGaming, have a
business worth £5.5bn.

They now plan, the Independent reported, to float it on the London stock market. "It is set to
become one of the biggest companies in Britain by value, overtaking household names such as Boots,
Sainsbury's, British Airways and Cable and Wireless."

The four brains behind the venture are Ruth Parasol, a Californian lawyer who reportedly made her
original fortune in online pornography, her husband, Russ de Leon, and two Indian technology
graduates, Anurag Dikshit and Vikrant Bhargava. They are, according to the daily, "cashing in
£1.26bn between them by selling part of their stakes to outside shareholders. They are holding on to
the rest of the shares themselves - giving each of them a worth of between £750m and £2bn".

Bhargava, 32, is originally from Rajasthan and specialises in banking before joining the
PartyGaming. His friend Anurag Dikshit, 33, is said to be a computer whizzkid who created the
technology behind online poker. He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, and
he was working as a software developer in the US for various companies when he hooked up with Ruth
Parasol in 1998. He owns 40 per cent of the company, which is said to be worth around £2.2bn.

The company's 1,100 staff, ranges from top management to call centre workers in India, who all will
also share in the bonanza. Even those at a basic level in PartyGaming's Hyderabad call centre could
earn more than three times their salary from the windfall.

Richard Segal, the chief executive of PartyGaming, was quoted saying: "What we have done using the
technology of the internet is give people the chance to play whenever they want, in their own homes,
without the intimidating prospect of having to look their opponents in the eye if they were in a
real-life game."

The online poker market has grown by a staggering 466 per cent in 12 months to reach $1.4bn (£770m)
last year. It is expected to double this year to $2.9 billion. Britons are responsible for
four-fifths of Europe's online gambling. More than four million Britons claim to have gambled
online.

Gamblers Anonymous, the gambling counselling service, said it had seen a dramatic rise in the number
of calls it receives from people blaming the Internet for their addiction." Gambling on the Internet
is like pornography on the Internet. Clicking a screen on a computer is much easier for many people
than going in to a sex shop and buying the goods face to face. People who are too scared or
embarrassed to go in to a betting shop will bet online, and they can also bet unnoticed," a Gambling
Anonymous spokesman told Independent.

© HT Media Ltd. 2005.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5983_1386890,00430005.htm