Mobile game publisher and developer Nazara Games has invested undisclosed amount against a majority stake acquisition in a gaming and multimedia startup NextWave Multimedia, reports The Economic Times.
Chennai-based NextWave develops games in the sports genre like World Cricket Championship (WCC), Group Play Cricket, Baseball etc. It has some ten mobile sports games on Android Play Store. The company claims to have developed 200 games so far across categories like multiplayer, virtual reality technology etc. The company says on its website that it started offering products four years ago, and since then it has seen around 80 million mobile downloads for its games.
Quoting Nazara’s CEO Manish Agarwal, the ET report adds that NextWave have a fan base of around15 million monthly active users which will help Nazara to strenghthen its foothold in the space globally.
Nazara’s previous investments
This is Nazara’s fourth investment since its launch. It focuses on the broad mobile gaming market and develops, and distributes games via tie ups with partners, which includes names like Electronic Arts. Its customers include mobile operators as well as handset manufacturers. A notable launch from the company was in February last year when it announced a 5-year investment of $20 million to develop a fully owned eSports league in India. Below is a list of its previous investments:
MoongLabs: In August 2017, Nazara Games invested in a Delhi-based mobile gaming startup MoongLabs, which develops free games for smartphones and tablets like mobile cricket games like Virat Super Cricket and Epic Cricket.
TrulySocial: The company invested an undisclosed amount into TrulySocial, a London-based mobile game studio in April 2016 which makes simulation/social world games for mobiles and tablets.
Mastermind Sports: In April 2016 again, Nazara acquired a 26% stake Mastermind Sports, a mobile game development company focused on sports category. Under the deal, Nazara had said that it would create and publish games developed in the sports category.
Competition
There some other notable players in the space. For instance, Paytm might be planning to develop games and publish them on Paytm, as its parent One97 signed a joint venture deal with an Alibaba Group owned unit to bring casual mobile and social games to Indian users. In June, Viaan Industries, a company promoted by businessman Raj Kundra and Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty signed an agreement with International Federation of Poker to launch app-based Match Indian Poker Leaque (MIPL) which will allow city based teams to compete in the global professional match poker league. Other companies focused on the mobile gaming sector in India include: GamingMonk, 99Games, Games2win, PlaySimple, amongst others.
