Nazara’s journey began when smartphones were unheard of and gaming was just a newly-found pastime for children. This was in the 1990s when nobody considered gaming a business in India.
44-year-old Nitish Mittersain, CEO, founder and joint MD of Nazara was also one of those curious kids who loved the world of gaming. But, a few years later, when he was pursuing his graduation at Sydenham College of Commerce & Economics, an idea stuck. To convert his passion into a profession. He was only 19, but couldn’t wait. This was also the dot-com era and the US video game market was flourishing, with a revenue of $12.7 billion, including $7.9 billion from retail and $4.8 billion from arcades, in 1995. Around this time, the sales of Super NES, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, Tamagotchi, and Dreamcast were at their peak. Sony sold 100,000 PlayStation units on the first day of launch in December 1994 and two million units within six months.
Mittersain realised that gaming could become a larger business in India. He followed his instinct and without delaying further, jumped right in, to launch Nazara in 1999 as a gaming portal. “We started off with an objective to have online games made in Flash. Mobile gaming had not taken off then,” he recalls. Mittersain’s father became the first investor in the company and also worked closely with him for many years. Within months, the business idea raised quite a few eyebrows, and he was even invited to a talk show called Movers and Shakers.
However, within a year, the business faced massive turmoil, the dot.com burst. “There was a lot of hype around the dot.com boom in 1999. But, within some time, there was a crash. And, I had to learn all my hard lessons from 2000 to 2002,” he said. Mittersain also had to repay a debt of Rs 3 crore, which was a massive amount at that time.
“When I started, there was a lot of excitement, as it was right in the middle of the dot com boom. So, there was a lot of ambition and excitement, but we fell off a cliff in 2000, which was a big wake-up call. As a young entrepreneur, I must have been 20 years old at the time, it took me some time to grasp the reality. Because before that, there was a lot of hype,” he said.
But, despite the fall, Mittersain continued with only one dream, to see gaming become big in India and Indian gaming becoming large in the world.
The Mumbai-based company kept trying different business strategies. In 2004, it signed a deal with Sachin Tendulkar to market mobile content based on the cricketer which generated a lot of traction. This was India’s largest mobile content deal at the time, worth $4 million. The three-year deal was the biggest brand licensing agreement in Asia-Pacific for mobile content at that time. The company distributed the content to mobile operators who marketed it. By FY2005, the company’s operating revenue increased to around Rs 5 crore. It also raised funding from PE firm WestBridge Capital around this time, which exited the firm later in 2021.
In 2007, Nazara came up with another innovation, which turned out to be a game-changer. It introduced a business model of gaming through telcos by offering unlimited games for a fixed monthly cost. This targeted youngsters who wanted to sample many games without paying a per-game fee. It was also highly successful for the company and they expanded to over 40 countries with this model. It was around this time that it also made a strategic decision to be a mobile-first company.
By 2017, it was time for another reinvention. It launched a business strategy called ‘the Friends of Nazara’. This means Nazara would become a diversified gaming platform that invested and partnered with experienced founders and management teams in various sub-sectors such as gamified learning, esports etc. The first most prominent acquisition it made was a 55% stake in Gurugram-based NODWIN Gaming, a gaming solutions company and creator of e-sports events, through a cash-and-stock deal. “This strategy was a first for the industry and this allowed us and the individual companies to scale rapidly through joint synergies and efforts. We continue to acquire and invest in companies actively,” the founder said. He claimed that multiple companies have scaled 10x in less than 3 years. Between 2019 to 2022, the gaming unicorn expanded into real money gaming, launched India’s first ever-televised Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) tournament co-created with Star Sports, boosted content offering through its subsidiary Sportskeeda, forayed into gamified early learning through the acquisition of Kiddopia, raised funding from GIC Singapore and made an IPO debut.
Today, Nazara has completed 25 years. So far, it has made more than 14 acquisitions and remains focused on driving growth through targeted investments and partnerships. It is also the only listed gaming company in India. In FY24, the company’s operational revenue increased to Rs 1,138 crore and EBITDA increased to Rs 128 crore during the same period. To date, Nazara has secured $128 million in funding and recently unveiled plans to raise an additional $100 million. It is backed by marquee investors such as Plutus Wealth and RARE Enterprises.
As we wrapped up the interview, Mittersain compared his starting days with today, “I was 19 when I started and was simply pursuing my passion. The first ten years were very tough, but we kept trying new things. I would say, we are doing the same even today and I feel like we have a lot more to achieve. But, we are also happy that we have come this far. Listening to our Prime Minister speak about gaming today is surreal. This was our dream.”