Nazara Technologies to earmark $100M towards M&As in the next 24 months

Gaming and sports media platform Nazara Technologies on Wednesday said it will allocate $100 million (~Rs 830 crore) towards strategic mergers and acquisitions over the next 24 months, aiming to strengthen its global foothold and take its gaming platform on the world stage.

The Mumbai-based company is looking to explore burgeoning opportunities in the gaming, esports, and adtech spaces, with emphasis on gaming IPs or studios as well as firms involved in advancing emerging technologies like web3, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, it said in a statement.

This comes nearly two months after Nazara bagged $90 million (~Rs 250 crore) via preferential share allotment from Zerodha-backed Kamath Associates and ICICI Securities.

In September 2023, the gaming firm raised $12 million (~Rs 100 crore) from Nikhil and Nithin Kamath. The company has also been on an acquisition spree following its fundraises, most recently it acquired a 10.77% stake in influencer platform Kofluence.

Speaking of the global expansion plans, Nitish Mittersain, Joint Managing Director and CEO of Nazara Technologies, said, “Nazara has seen significant success in its ‘acquire and scale’ strategy over the last few years as can be seen by the post-acquisition growth in Kiddopia, Nodwin Gaming and Sportskeeda among others. Our unique decentralised model allows these businesses to operate autonomously by strong management and provides us with significant bandwidth to scale the platform we have created.”

He added, “The $100 million pledge will further boost this opportunity for us in that direction. We are particularly focused on investing in and acquiring gaming studios globally with a specific focus on India’s 500 million gamers as well as the large North American market.”

In the quarter ended September 2023, Nazara earned Rs 297.24 crore in revenue from operations—a jump of 12.7% compared to Rs 263.8 crore earned in the comparable period last year. The company's revenue in the first half of FY24 totalled Rs 551.7 crore.