Polymarket and Kalshi continue to operate in India despite an April 25 government advisory, addressed to VPN providers, labeling prediction markets as “illegal”
Polymarket and Kalshi Inc. have been allowing customers in India to sign up and trade on their prediction markets …
Context & Ripple Effects
This sits within a broader expansion of prediction markets into legally contested territory: related coverage describes Kalshi using its federal financial license to offer sports-related contracts in US states where gambling is illegal.
The platforms’ growth has also brought more scrutiny of market integrity, with both companies reportedly seeing an uptick in suspicious-trade investigations. The India access issue adds geographic compliance to those operational pressures.
First-order effects
- Indian users can still register and trade on Polymarket and Kalshi despite the government’s advisory, leaving both platforms exposed to a stated local legal objection.
- The advisory puts VPN providers at the center of enforcement, while the platforms’ continued availability makes their access controls and jurisdictional policies more consequential.
Second-order effects
- VPN and other access intermediaries may face pressure to restrict connections to prediction-market services, potentially making access less reliable even without a direct platform block.
- The episode raises the compliance burden for both operators as they pursue growth: they must weigh market access against stronger identity, location, and suspicious-account controls.
Third-order effects
- If governments increasingly treat prediction markets as gambling or otherwise prohibited local activity, the sector may fragment into country-specific access regimes rather than operate as a broadly borderless online market.
- The combination of cross-border access disputes and heightened suspicious-trading scrutiny could make regulatory credibility and enforcement tooling a competitive differentiator, not merely a back-office function.
The trend: Prediction markets are expanding faster than a consistent global regulatory framework, forcing platforms to reconcile growth ambitions with increasingly localised rules on access and oversight.