Tell us about your IPO plans.
Nitish Mittersain: It is an offer for sale so we are not raising any primary in the company. It is a Rs 582-crore IPO with approximately 54 lakh shares in hold. is a major shareholder which is going to be selling shares in this IPO. We are very excited about it and looking forward to a big milestone in our journey.
Gaming is a very strong opportunity in India, we have seen the penetration of mobile devices being a key driver for gaming as well. What is the growth potential for Nazara Tech?
All the macro parameters from the quality of internet driven by fibre as well as mobile network and speed improvement and quality of connection are good for gaming now. There is a digital micro transaction infrastructure and smartphones are becoming really powerful devices at very affordable costs. All of those factors have kind of catapulted the number of gamers in this country. India has always been a country which generates maximum amounts of downloads in the world and which gets the maximum amount of active users in the world but that does not convert into paying users.
The quality of internet and the digital micro transaction infrastructure with gaming becoming a social community has led to 50-70 million of paying Indians who are buying virtual items inside the games and that is really the start of the golden age of the Indian gaming market where it will no more just be a market known for its downloads but it also be known for its paying user capacity and the whole monetisation potential which this game market offers. That is really a core for Nazara. As we see this market growing, we have seen the success of games like Free Fire, PUBG as this market is being converted into paying users. We believe that the opportunities for both build in India for India as well as build in India for globe are going to present themselves and we are building a strong springboard for us to leverage them.
You have got strong experienced investors as well and they are backing the company. Walk us through a list of marquee investors and take us through the company’s growth plans.
WestBridge Capital Investment was one of our key investors. We have had the fortune of having the backing of very experienced and well recognised investors such as Mr Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and India InfoLine. They were very patient and we got a lot of support and guidance from them. We hope to have a lot more investors supporting us as we go forward. We also had Hornbill Capital Investors in January. We are very excited to have them on board. Nazara had a great experience with all the investors that have been invested with us and we really look forward to their support and guidance going forward as well.
What is the number of your total subscribers? How do you plan to grow them and how much did Covid aid your overall subscriber penetration with people at home using the internet a lot more and gaming?
We really sat down in 2017 and looked at the mega consumer trends which are going to shape the gaming and adjacent industries. We identified that a) the gaming would be the largest pie of entertainment because it is free to play. You are really either competing with yourself or competing with others to really make you feel happy and that gives you a kind of a dopamine kick which makes it a very niche medium of entertainment, rather than passive consumption. And we said that that is what is going to really drive the entertainment in emerging markets.
b), We said that live sports entertainment, on demand sports entertainment would be disrupted by 14-25-year olds watching the professional players playing video games in professional tournaments. That is something which is really going to disrupt the sports fans’ behaviours and we really took a very early call in a market which was even smaller three, four years back.
c) We really believe and are passionate about the fact that learning can be really fun. IT can be really made interactive and especially for young kids, one can build a solid holistic foundation of development through very interactive activity based games which can teach self expression, creative expression and all those aspects which lay the foundation. Those are the three big consumer trends which we really embarked upon. We continue to see them emerging and solidify and we will continue to pursue them.
