Our most recent acquisition is Trinity Gaming. The cost was only around 24 billion rupees. What is your future acquisition strategy? Do you have a specific amount assigned that you’re considering implementing and a specific feature that you’re considering adding?
Nitish Mittersain: It is important to understand that Nazara operates its M&A flywheel on two levels. One is what the parent entity is doing, and this is the field in which we would like to enter. However, many of our subsidiaries are also cash flow generating companies and accumulate cash. We also help our subsidiaries learn and support our M&A strategy, as many of these are asset-light businesses that don’t need to inject large amounts of cash for organic growth. they unfold. This particular deal you’re talking about, Trinity Gaming, is related to the M&A that our esports arm, Nodwin Gaming, has done, and Nodwin’s influencer platform for relevant youth. Nodwin has built a very large esports ecosystem and you should think of them as a piper to the youth. In today’s world, youth attention is invaluable, and Nodwin is able to capture and leverage it through our efforts in esports.
From an overall Nazara perspective, we recently completed fresh funding of Rs 855 million. A number of prominent investors are participating, including SBI Mutual Fund, and prominent technology entrepreneurs such as Mithun Sacheti of CharaTrain. We are very excited to leverage this capital for future growth. Inorganic growth is a significant part of our growth opportunities, and we will use these new funds to drive future growth.
You answered both questions about financing and acquisitions. We also wanted to know what the future holds for the latest news of integrating with ONDC and launching gCommerce. It will integrate e-commerce within the game. What will happen to it?
Nitish Mittersign: There are over 500 million gamers in India who play games on their mobile phones every day and the idea is that there is a huge audience. It is one of the largest in the world. However, India remains very low in terms of monetization through in-app purchases and advertising. He is not even in the top 10 in the world rankings. So what needs to be done here to scale gaming monetization in India? We need to find a new India-first approach. And one of the things we thought about as Nazara was that if we could integrate e-commerce into the game and give shoppers the right opportunity to buy what they want while they’re playing the game, we could create some really interesting new ideas. This could lead to a monetization model. Opportunities for pan-India stacks with platforms like ONDC are emerging and many initiatives will go a long way in enabling experimentation with such innovations. It’s the innovation of the moment. It’s a concept. We’re rolling it out in the fourth quarter of 2025 (January to March) and we’ll see how it goes over the next year.
Let’s also talk a little bit about revenue growth forecasts. I know you don’t want to give specific numbers, but are you on track to continue achieving your goal of 10x revenue growth over the next five years? What will that lead to?
Nitish Mittersign: If it’s less than that, it’s a shame and you need to think about what you can do to achieve it. That’s exactly what we’re working on, and all our teams are working towards that. At present, the company is on track to achieve its target of achieving EBITDA of Rs 300 crore in FY27 and is very focused on achieving it.
What has the implementation of AI been like in your business? Because AI impacts every company, whether technological or non-technical. Specifically regarding Nazara, the gaming area, and other areas. What are your thoughts on the adoption of AI? Or is it some kind of disruptor for you as well?
Nitish Mittersign: No, we see AI as a huge opportunity for our company, and we’ve established an internal AI task force that is very active in working on all aspects of gaming that can be reinvented with an AI-first approach. Masu. What we’re actually doing is breaking down each component of game development, my team reinventing them through an AI-first approach, testing them in our small studio, and running them in our own way. That’s something we’re working on expanding to all of our studios.
As for the benefits here, AI allows us to deliver more content about games faster and more cost-effectively. This not only leads to cost optimization over a period of time, but also improves monetization by increasing the speed of the game. More and more content will be distributed. You can develop more content around these IPs, especially if you own them. Additionally, many of these aspects, such as player engagement, player monetization, and data analysis, will be greatly enhanced using AI. So these are very exciting times, and any company in the gaming industry will definitely be disrupted if they don’t focus on AI. But we’re very much into it.As Nodwin continues to invest in new events, new IP, and future developments, what does the future hold for profitability and growth?
Nitish Mittersign: Nodwin is expanding very well, and many of the new IPs they’ve bought, including Comic-Con, are expanding very nicely from 4-5 cities to 8-9 cities next year. We are seeing very good traction and in terms of Nodwin’s EBITDA margin, we believe that starting next year, we will also start focusing on optimizing some of the margins. To date, the focus has been on heavily reinvesting in growth, which we have successfully achieved. They have built a very large ecosystem in the esports space, they are collaborating, and we will start focusing on improving our EBITDA margins.
