NAZARA TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED IPO Review

Company Profile

• The IPO of gaming firm Nazara Technologies opened today to strong demand and the company, backed by ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, has set a price band of ₹1,100-1,101 a share for the issue.

• Nazara Technologies Limited is India based diversified gaming and sports media platform with presence in India and across emerging and developed global markets such as Africa and North America, and offerings across the interactive gaming, eSports and gamified early learning ecosystems including World Cricket Championship (WCC) and CarromClash in mobile games, Kiddopia in gamified early learning, Nodwin and Sportskeeda in eSports and eSports media, and Halaplay and Qunami in skill-based, fantasy and trivia games. (Sorce: F&S Report).
• Incorporated in 1999, Nazara Technologies Ltd is a leading mobile game company in India. The company offers a range of diversified gaming products across the Interactive gaming, eSports, and gamified early learning ecosystem across emerging markets i.e. India, Africa, South East Asia, Middle East, and Latin America. It is one of the leading live eSports streaming and on-demand eSports media content providers in India. CarromClash and World Cricket Championships in mobile games, Kiddopia in gamified early learning, Nodwin and Sportskeeda in eSports, and Halaplay and Qunami are some of its offerings.
• Companies’ expansion into global markets has been strategic, both in terms of geographies as well as timing for entering new markets. They built capacities and capabilities across their offerings in India, targeting within the country, and then replicated their business model in global markets to target gamers. Their content is developed in India for the Indian as well as global audience, allowing them to achieve scale, as evidenced by an average of 40.17 million Monthly Active Users (MAUs) for Financial Year 2020 and average of 57.54 million MAUs across all games for the nine month period ended December 31, 2020.
• Companies’ growth is driven by its visionary management team. They have also benefitted from their ability to identify and acquire unique, gaming and content oriented teams. Companies’ growth is also driven by highly coveted investors such as IIFL, Mr. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Mr. Utpal Seth.
• As part of in-house Freemium Business, the company understands local gamer behaviour in designing games and innovatively incorporating local, licensed, intellectual property to drive the growth of network of games is one of its key strengths. Localised gamer insights are reflected in the popularity of some of its mobile games on the Google Play Store, such as, `World Cricket Championship 2`, `Chhota Bheem Race`, and `Motu Patlu Game`. These games have consistently been part of the top three games on the top free charts on the Google Play Store ahead of certain globally established names such as Candy Crush, Subway Surfer and Temple Run.
• Company have formed several partnerships, most notably with the Indian telecom giant Airtel. In November 2020, Company received the ‘Users’ Choice Game of 2020’ award for WCC 3. (Source: Google Play Store) WCC2 became the people’s choice winner in gaming in PM Modi’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innovation Challenge. Developed by Nextwave Multimedia, a subsidiary of Nazara Technologies, WCC games have seen tremendous success since their launch in 2015. From being one of India’s most-awarded mobile games to being one of the world’s Top 10 Games by monthly active usage to getting listed on Google Play Store’s Editor’s Choice section, WCC games have done it all. Overall, WCC apps have garnered more than 140 million installs across devices. (Source: F&S Report).

Company Promoters:

Vikash Mittersain, Nitish Mittersain, and Mitter Infotech LLP is the company promoters.

In a note Aditya Birla Money said: “The gaming industry is set to witness 30%+ CAGR over 2020-2023E on the back of high mobile penetration, increasing internet penetration and increasing no. of gamers. Nazara has a wide spread presence both in terms of geography and product portfolio which offers strong growth visibility.”

“The IPO is valued at 8.3x on H1FY21 (annualised) Price/ Sales which we believe is reasonable when compared to the newly listed technology stocks (average nearly 13 times). We assign SUBSCRIBE rating on the issue,” it added.