Nazara Technologies – the diversified gaming company backed by marquee investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala – has hit the market today with its initial public offering (IPO) looking to raise over Rs 580 crore. Nitish Mittersain, Joint MD, and Manish Agarwal, CEO of Nazara Technologies, discussed the growth outlook for the company.

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"There was a lot of positive impact of the COVID-19 but some of our businesses were also negatively impacted. Especially the ones relating to live sports. So all in all we had a slightly positive impact and not a lot of the numbers are driven by the COVID-19 impact,” said Mittersain.

The company has already picked up significant growth acceleration prior to the COVID-19.

"What is working for us in the last three-four years, we have entered strategic businesses like e-Sports, MFI learning, sport simulation and these are the businesses of the future. We believe they are at the inflection point and that is what we are experiencing. That is what is driving our growth,” Mittersain added.

“The margins have increased from 3.5 percent last year to 6 percent plus in the first half of this year. We will continue to see margin improvement as these businesses grow,” he said.

“We are already market leaders in these segments but we want to put up a lot of distance between us and the next potential competitor. Therefore, maximising EBITDA at this time will be an extremely wrong way to go about it. We are not in a tactical business where slight margin improvements are going to make a big difference. We have to be the market leaders and we are very clear about that,” Mittersain stated.

“For Nazara the core DNA built over the last 20 years is to build profitable cashflow driven businesses. We will continue to run positive EBITDA businesses. But right now the focus is on scale and on growth,” he pointed out.

When asked if Nazara a gaming company, Agarwal replied, “The way we look at our business, we are riding three big consumer trends. One is the trend which is gaming, it is one of the largest part of the entertainment media space. Second is sports entertainment business. Third is the core gaming fundamental principles.”

For entire discussion, watch the video.

(Edited by : Priyanka Rathi)

First Published:Mar 17, 2021 7:19 PM IST