Nazara Technologies got a thumbs up from the markets with a 5.51% bump in its share price to Rs 1,805.30 after the company announced its acquisition of OpenPlay, a Hyderabad-based skill gaming company. This acquisition, Nazara Technologies stated, was worth Rs 186.4 crore. The first tranche of the acquisition will carry on until the end of the second quarter of the current financial year, the company revealed in a filing with the bourses.
Nazara Technologies got listed on the stock exchange earlier in March this year. Since then, its shares have jumped from an issue price of Rs 1,101 with an 84% rise, outperforming the Sensex which has only advanced by 18% this year.
Post the company’s acquisition of OpenPla, Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal, in an interview with Mint, said he was eyeing a Rs 100 crore in revenue by the end of FY22 from the real-money gaming arm of the conglomerate. This signal of intent comes on the back of several favorable court rulings for India’s online gaming industry, the latest being the Madras High Court’s verdict on 3rd August 2021.
“The fact that real-money gaming contributes 80% to all e-gaming revenues and recent positives coming from various court judgments is giving us confidence. Considering the positives emerging from the space, we are looking to scale this business. We want to touch Rs 100 crore of revenues for every gaming segment we operate in. And skill-based gaming only contributes to Rs 15 crore of our overall revenues, at present, which is insignificant. We want to scale this segment to over Rs 100 crore in revenues this year,” argued Agarwal who thinks that Madras High Court’s judgment in favor of the real-money gaming platforms will open many doors of opportunities and could ramp up the business.
Nazara is looking towards the future as a company that offers plug-and-play, software-as-a-service offering for real-money games. This will allow other platforms to offer this service to their users. With the acquisition of OpenPlay, Nazara is aiming at reaching influencers by allowing them to host online skill-based games through a plug-and-play tech.
While not limiting its reach to the Indian subcontinent, Nazara is planning to foray into the US with its offerings soon.
“Close to 43 states in the US have allowed real-money gaming and that is a big opportunity for us. We would like to take real-money gaming to the US markets,” said Agarwal.
Currently, 80% of Nazara’s revenue comes from India and North America. For the June quarter, Nazara’s reported net profit signals a striking INR 13.5 crores as compared to a loss of INR 21.7 crores last year. The company’s revenue grew by 45% to reach INR 131.2 crores.
Agarwal also mentioned that “Amongst our business lines, we believe that two of them (free games and real-money gaming) need further augmentation. We will look at a pipeline of acquisitions for these segments in the next six to eight months.”
Nazara owns major stakes in Paper Boat Apps, a kids gamified learning platform, Nodwin Gaming, an e-sports company; Absolute Sports, owner of multi-sports content platform Sportskeeda; Nextwave Multimedia, developer of cricket simulation game World Cricket Championship (WCC); Halaplay, a fantasy gaming platform; and Sports Unity, creator of quiz game Qunami.