India's new rules treat Kalshi and Polymarket as illegal, but both platforms are still onboarding Indian users and processing trades. The country's tech ministry has named Polymarket directly in a warning to internet providers, even as the actual cutoff hasn't happened on the ground.
India's Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Rules went into force at the start of May, sweeping prediction markets in with sports books and other gambling operators under one broad category of "online money games." The whole group is banned outright.
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology followed up with letters to internet service providers and VPN companies, putting them on notice that helping users reach those platforms could carry legal liability.
That's the regulatory side, but the on-the-ground reality looks different. Indian users can still sign up for both Kalshi and Polymarket, complete identity checks, and trade.
Both Kalshi and Polymarket have publicly said they haven't received a direct order from the Indian government to halt service. Kalshi has added that its legal counsel would comply if a direct order arrives, and both companies keep onboarding Indian users in the meantime.
Both companies use stablecoins for cross-border deposits, which makes traditional payment-rail blocks harder to enforce.
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India is the cricket capital of the world, and prediction markets have figured that out. Indian Premier League matches on Kalshi have at one point seen trading volume rivaling US baseball games, with one IPL match moving $27.7 million across Kalshi and Polymarket combined.
India's own underground betting market for elections and sports is already estimated at ₹25,000 crore - roughly $3 billion. Regulated, on-shore prediction markets are a fraction of that.
The platforms are betting that demand stays whether the law catches up or not, and so far the trading volume has held up.
The standoff is testing how far a government can actually reach offshore platforms that settle in stablecoins and route around banks. India can pressure internet providers and payment rails, but enforcing a true block on apps that work through VPNs is a different problem.
Watch the payment-rail side closely. If the Reserve Bank of India moves to block Indian banks from settling with stablecoin-based platforms, that's a much bigger problem for the operators than any IP-level block.
If India makes an example out of Kalshi or Polymarket through account freezes, payment cutoffs, or user prosecutions, the rest of the global prediction market industry will read the result carefully.
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