Watching cricket and playing rummy are online passions for hundreds of millions of Indians, fuelling a nascent gaming industry on the verge of quadrupling its revenue. That’s attracting attention from of Asia’s biggest internet companies.

Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding and SoftBank Group are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Indian apps that use loopholes in anti-gambling laws — dating to India’s colonial era — to offer bettors cash prizes, holidays to Macau and new iPhones...

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