Building a winning hand card by card

HOW DORM ROOM CARD GAMES BECAME A MEGA-MONEY GAMING EMPIRE

- ANEES HUSSAIN

THE BIRTH OF INDIA'S online real money gaming industry can be traced to a cramped London apartment in 2005, where a group of Indian students gathered around a table playing cards after classes. "This industry we see thriving in India today was born in my room in London where I was studying," says Deepak Gullapalli, founder and CEO of Head Digital Works, the company behind online rummy platform A23, initially launched as Ace2Three in 2006. It became the first Indian company to introduce online rummy and real-money gaming later in 2009.

While his friends dealt physical cards for their nightly rummy games, Gullapalli noticed one roommate playing Solitaire on Microsoft Windows—the iconic card game that had shipped with Windows since 1990, becoming perhaps the most played computer game in history. In that pre-smartphone era of 2005, when Nokia's monochrome Snake was the height of mobile gaming and the iPhone was still two years away, Solitaire was a ubiquitous digital diversion, instantly recognizable with its green background and bouncing cards that celebrated a win.

The question that sparked a multi-billion-dollar industry was disarmingly simple: "Why are you not playing rummy on the computer?"

For Gullapalli, rummy wasn't just any card game. Coming from Andhra Pradesh, where the game is deeply embedded in its cultural fabric, his earliest memory of playing rummy was on a train journey with his family at age 10. "My mother was a very good rummy player. In fact, she was the one who actually tested our software initially," he recalls with pride. In the Telugu-speaking regions, rummy transcends mere entertainment—it's always been a social ritual played during festivals like Diwali and Sankranti, a multi-generational activity that bridges age gaps and reinforces community bonds, Gullapalli recalls.