Sugal & Damani, the main lottery operator in India, confirmed its plans to continue its international expansion, after having been chosen as winner of the tender corresponding to the third license of the British National Lottery.

The National Lottery Commission considered that Sugal & Damani offer was solid and that the company had complied with the seven demanding norms required by the tender process.

The company, which was the only rival to the current operator, Camelot Group plc, declared that it would continue applying for lottery tenders in different parts of the world, including Africa and the South of Asia. Sugal & Damani aims to expand its presence in the UK games of chance sector and it will probably apply one more time for the tender process to obtain the license of the National Lottery once the ten-year period is over.

Kamlesh Vijay, general director, commented: „We will continue searching for opportunities outside India and we will keep on developing the business in our national market, composed by a billion people. We have learnt a lot from the tender process experience in UK“.

In order to obtain the lottery license, Sugal & Damani presented ambicious plans, such as increase the sale of tickets in the ten-year period to USD 129.5 billion, which would generate USD 36.2 billion for charity and the commitment to donate any profit of mor than 1%. The company proposed to release new games, increase incentives and services for retailers in order to expand sales via cell phones and other electronic media.

Vijay affirmed: „We feel we were treated with absolut equity in spite of the fact that we were foreigners which competed with the current operator”, and added: „However, it is difficult to take the place of a company established in every market due to its local presence”.

Sugal & Damani has operated lotteries in India for 37 years and performs more than five million dayly transactions in more than 20,000 points of sale.

After achieving a dominant position in the Indian lottery market, it considers it has more growth opportunities in other countries. The firm still considers a possible expansion in UK through different games of chance services.

Sugal & Damani has 350 Information Tecnology Specialists and performs the software design of the lottery in its own facilities. Its systems are compatible with a wide range of equipments and access formats, including cell phones.

The collection of the group exceeds USD 1.4 billion and it has a total of 700 employees.

For this tender, Sugal & Damani joined 18 powerful international partners which are located in UK and are leaders in their respective sectors.