Indian gaming and learning outfit Nazara Technologies has announced its revenue increased by 84 per cent in the financial year 2021 to $61 million (₹4,542 million).
Its gamified learning app had the highest percentage revenue contribution with 39 per cent, followed by esports at 37 per cent. The telco subscription business accounted for 16 per cent, while freemium and skill-based real money gaming contributed 4 per cent each.
The gamified learning category experienced 820 per cent growth to $23.5 million, with esports rising by 102 per cent to $23 million. These two categories majorly helped Nazara to achieve 470 per cent EBITDA growth year-on-year.
Nazara’s growth saga
Nazara has been one of the most aggressive investors in the Indian gaming ecosystem and has diversified its business in a variety of gaming sub-categories.
The Jhunjhunwala-backed company has a presence in India and across emerging and developed global markets such as Africa and North America.
The company has achieved this by building a network in the interactive gaming and sports space through its investments and acquisitions in various gaming categories including esports, edutainment, infotainment, fantasy sports, multiplayer games like carrom and mobile cricket games (WCC) among others.
Category revenue distribution
Gamified Learning: The Kiddopia app for two to six-year-old kids with subscriptions being paid by parents had 340,282 paying subscribers as of March 2021.
It experienced a growth of 172 per cent in the number of paying subscribers as compared to March 2020 when it had 197,522 paying subscribers.
The cost per trial has stayed between $22 to $26 in the financial year for 2021, with the monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) estimated between $6.3 to $6.4 and monthly churn arriving between four per cent to six per cent.
Esports revenues include media rights licensing of own content, brands sponsorships for offline and online events, licensing fees received from game publishers for community activation and programmatic inventory selling on the Sportskeeda portal. Sportskeeda alone witnessed 487 per cent growth in MAUs in FY21.
It is understandable from the fact that it recorded 68 million MAU during peak cricket season (October 2020), up from 11 million MAU in April 2020.
As for games, Nazara’s World Cricket Championship is being played for 46 minutes per day by over 15 million monthly active users making it the world's largest cricket simulation game franchise on mobile.
