Within a month of using betting apps, job seeker Santosh Kol lost the entire 40,000 rupees ($489) his father sent him for his tuition.
Kol’s father, a construction labourer in Sidhi district in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, had borrowed the money from the community leaders in his village to pay for the coaching classes where his son was enrolled to prepare for national competitive exams for government jobs. Kol, 25, said that one of his friends suggested he bet on these apps, which offer the opportunity to earn large sums of money. Initially, he won a few thousand rupees but then became greedy and lost everything.
