Striker, an MPL-backed Web3 cricket-card bet, shut down as India's gaming GST bit

A Web3 fantasy platform where users collected and traded digital collectible cards of cricket icons, earning money on its marketplace.

That Indian cricket fans would pay real money to collect and trade digital player cards on a Web3 marketplace

Striker was founded in 2022 by Mobile Premier League colleagues Krisha Mohan Vedula and Nitesh Jain, with MPL as backer, letting users collect and trade Web3 digital collectibles and cards featuring cricket icons.

In February 2023 Rario, a Dream Sports-backed rival that had raised $120M in 2022, approached the Delhi High Court claiming Striker's cards carried names and caricatures of about 170 players for which it held exclusive rights; the court rejected the petition, saying the information was publicly available. Days before the shutdown, MPL moved to buy back all crypto tokens issued under its Good Game Exchange protocol, reportedly issuing about 2.5 million preferential shares worth $12.75 million to token holders.

Shut down operations in December 2023; cofounder Krisha Mohan Vedula exited MPL. The sector squeeze had already seen MPL lay off 350 people in August, and Hike and Spartan Poker cut hundreds of jobs.

The tax regime attacked the model directly: 28% GST on real-money gaming plus a 30% tax and 1% TDS on virtual-digital-asset trades.

The blast radius was sector-wide — MPL's 350 layoffs, Hike and Spartan Poker cuts, Fantok and Quizzy suspensions — so this was not one company's execution failure.

Winning its court fight against Rario in February 2023 didn't save it: legal clarity over player likenesses couldn't offset the tax wall.

Its backer was retrenching too, buying back its own GGX tokens with about $12.75M of preferential shares rather than funding new bets.

A consumer betting product lives or dies by its tax treatment: a 28% GST plus crypto taxes can erase the economics before competition ever does.

By 15 December 2023 Striker had shut down operations and cofounder Krisha Mohan Vedula had exited MPL; a spokesperson for MPL declined to comment. The shutdown was first reported by Moneycontrol. It came days after MPL decided to buy back the crypto tokens released under its Good Game Exchange protocol, reportedly spending about $12.75 million in preferential shares to pull the tokens back.