What happens in Vegas, stays in Chennai

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Now that the the Amish are phone phreaking…

An Amish teenager will pay a fine and restitution to a neighbor for illegally tapping into his telephone line… The Amish traditionally shun telephones and other modern conveniences in their homes. [Link]

… and godless Chinese churn out Hindu idols…

Nowadays, factories in agnostic, communist China are producing Ganesh, Krishna and other Hindu idols out of plastic and porcelain at such low cost and high quality that Indians are lapping them up. India’s newfound love for mass-produced, “Made in China” images of their gods is driving many in the poorest sections of the nation’s traditional idol-making industry out of business, repeating a pattern seen in its toy-making industry. [Link]

… it was only a matter of time before India started writing software for that den of sin, Vegas (via Digg):

… software development for casinos will now happen in India — a country in which gambling is illegal. [Link]

Bally Systems, [the] world’s largest casino technology [company], is making India its largest… software… development centre… [its] development facility in Chennai will have 250 engineers by mid 2007, against 70 at present. [Link]

Maybe it’s schadenfreude from the Party Poker IPO:

PartyGaming, the world’s biggest online poker company, aims to float this month in what is likely to be London’s biggest new listing for four years and reap millions for executives and employees… Anurag Dikshit, group operations director, is the biggest shareholder, and his 40 percent holding before the IPO should be worth at least $3 billion. [Link]

On the morning that online gambling company Party Gaming floated on the London Stock Exchange in late June, Anurag Dikshit (pronounced Dixit) joined the elite ranks of the young and ridiculously rich. Having written the software for Party Gaming’s blockbuster poker site, Party Poker, and later becoming an investor in the company, 33-year-old Mr. Dikshit earned an instant $770 million that morning from selling shares. That put him into the Google-rich range, and his take could be one of the public market’s biggest jackpots this year.

The Indian Institute of Technology graduate is media shy and declined to comment for this profile, but those who know him have reportedly called Mr. Dikshit a quiet workaholic. His work created proprietary software that enables poker players across the globe to play against each other while the company takes a “rake,” or small percentage of each hand… Mr. Dikshit graduated in 1994 with a computer science degree… [Link]

That’ll teach you to mispronounce his last name.

Related posts: Desis + Porn Princesses, Chinese idol

8 thoughts on “What happens in Vegas, stays in Chennai”

  1. what an interesting article..outsourcing vegas? wow.. and of course.. mature me, chuckled at his name.. as kids we always would try to come up with the worst mispronounced name.. and the name that won hands down was harsit dixit… ehem.. love how they even had to put in the article how to pronounce it… but the best part was your ending comment… yup yup.. with stock worth 3 billion.. he can be called whatever he wants to be called 😉

  2. Did you have to link to TOI? I just got bombarded with about 15 popups. Good article though, once I found it.

  7. The name of a friend of mine is Ashit. Yup. A-shit (in case any one missed that).

    Pity it isn’t Ashit Dikshit.

    (in case you’re wondering if i made that up…i didn’t. Ashit’s another name for the sun in Sanskrit). But Anurag’s awesome. Poker rocks.

  8. I wonder how Anurag explained the porn actress connection to his parents and his various (older) relatives everywhere…..

    Although, considering how much money he subsequently made, I guess nobody’s really going to give a damn about the dodgy connection (especially him) 😉