An online poker company comes to the public markets

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Editor's note: Last week, a rather peculiar company filed its draft papers for an initial public offering— Deltatech Gaming, which runs the online poker platform Adda52. Deltatech—until recently known as Gaussian Networks—is a decade-old firm that is known for its poker tournaments and big cash prizes. It is one of the oldest online poker companies of India and one of the largest as well. It’s also expanded into other games such as rummy, but more than 90% of its business is from poker.  What is surprising is that never before has a real-money gaming company approached the public markets to raise funds in India. Partly because the sector has only taken off in the past five years or so and partly because it has only been about a year since Indian internet startups started hitting the IPO circuit. But the biggest reason of all is that real-money gaming has been at the centre of regulatory and legal attacks in various states. The consensus so far has been that the public shareholders are simply not ready to accept and buy into a pure …