Dream11 parent co joins ‘ghar waapsi’ trend, shifts domicile from US to India

After the likes of PhonePe, Zepto, and others, Dream Sports Inc., the parent company of Dream11, is the latest to have shifted its domicile back to India from the US in a reverse merger move.

A company spokesperson confirmed this in a statement, “Dream Sports is leveraging tech to unlock the massive potential of India’s sports ecosystem. We have completed a ‘ghar waapsi’ and are now an Indian domiciled business.”

In September 2024, an amendment was introduced to establish a fast-track process under Section 233 of the Companies Act, 2013, allowing certain cross-border mergers between a foreign holding company and its Indian subsidiary to proceed without requiring approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT). Instead, these mergers can be done with the approval of the Reserve Bank of India.

Companies such as Razorpay, Udaan, Pine Labs, and Meesho are reversing their earlier decisions to set up their domicile in the US, while Zepto has already completed the transition.

In 2022, fintech giant PhonePe faced a tax bill of ₹8,000 crore for a similar move, while Groww paid a one-time tax payment of ₹1,340 crore.

Dream11 has not filed its annual statements for FY24. In FY23, it posted a profit of ₹188 crore for FY23 compared to ₹142 crore in FY22, according to the filings sourced from Tofler. The company reported revenue of ₹6,384 crore for the year ended March 31, 2023, as against ₹3,840 crore in the year-ago period.