Harsh Jain and Bhavit Sheth were school friends who bonded over sports and FIFA. Jain went to high school in the UK in 1998, where he discovered fantasy sports. He briefly worked at Microsoft, then joined the family business.
After finishing engineering in 2007, Jain pitched a startup just as the IPL was launching. Only Sheth joined. They started Dream11 in 2008 as a free, ad-supported site. The ad model failed because Indian ad rates were far lower than in the West, and they spent about a year and a half of friends-and-family money.
To stay alive they ran a social media agency whose clients included Mumbai Indians. Banks refused to open accounts because they thought gaming was gambling. Jain told an industry summit in November 2019 that he heard no close to 150 times before Kalaari Capital agreed to invest in 2014.
A 2017 High Court ruling held the game was predominantly skill, and users grew from 1 million in 2014 to 45 million in 2018. Dream11 raised $840 million at an $8 billion valuation in 2021. After the August 2025 law it paused paid contests.