Casino Royale: India eyes casino biz

BANGALORE: Most people who want to get rich quick flock to Las Vegas. Now, the people who put up the gambling boxes are flocking to India. Call it reverse wealth drain. Well almost!
Bally Systems, world���s largest casino technology player, is making India its largest and most critical software products and solutions development centre.
Bally Systems India development facility in Chennai will have 250 engineers by mid 2007, against 70 at present.It was in October last year that Bally entered the country. It has hardware and software development centres in Reno in Nevada, Atlanta City, Seattle and Nice in France.
The company vice president & managing director Srinivasan Raghavan told The Times of India that: ���Indian presence will have a significant impact on our global operations as a wide range of technology development activities are going to be anchored from here. We want to drive the technology innovation in gaming by tapping talent available in the country.������
Bally���s India centre will design and develop casino management systems, slot management systems and table management solutions, comprehensive player tracking solutions, fail-safe data capture systems, casino accounting systems, credit and collection systems and casino marketing solutions.
Raghavan said Bally���s entry has great strategic importance. Macau China, is expected to become the world���s largest casino destination, by 2007, dwarfing the casino leader Las Vegas. Macau, an island next to Hong Kong, today is fast growing legalised casino point that has a transaction turnover of $5.1 billion, against $5.3 billion in Las Vegas and $4.8 billion in Atlanta City.
China is clearly going to be the leader in casino business. Huge amount of casino infrastructure is getting installed in Korea, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Malaysia and Dubai.
In fact, casino has a direct impact on the tourism market. Therefore, India cannot resist casinos in the near future.
Like China, it should earmark a location for legalised gambling that can attract tourists. ���We have in-depth domain expertise. Our strategy is to get closer to emerging markets. We are in the casino business from 1932. In addition to that, we offer turnkey hardware and software solutions across the world.������In Las Vegas alone, the company has installations in over 300 casinos.
Recently, Singapore���s Global Gaming Expo has identified 20 people around the world, who, it said, would ���create ripples������ in the gaming industry. Singapore prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong and Bally���s executive vice president, Ramesh Srinivasan are among them.