Nazara Technologies, a gaming and sports media company, announced on Tuesday that it has acquired a 55% stake in Datawrkz, a programmatic advertising and monetisation company. The transaction will value the company at approximately Rs 225 crore, or approximately $30 million, based on its Ebitda performance in calendar year 2022.
According to Nazara, the transaction will be completed in two instalments. In the first leg, it will acquire a 33% stake for Rs 60 crore, of which Rs 35 crore will be partially paid in cash and the remaining Rs 25 crore will be paid in cash or by share swap by April 2022. Nazara has reserved the right to purchase an additional 22 percent in the second tranche, which is expected to close in Q4 FY23.
Datawrkz, founded in 2013 by IIM Ahmedabad alumnus Senthil Govindan, is a global advertising technology firm focused on accelerating user and revenue growth for clients through highly optimised digital advertising.
For the fiscal year 2021, Datawrkz reported combined revenue of Rs 90.7 crore (approximately $12.1 million) and an Ebitda margin of 12%, with approximately 70% of its revenue coming from the United States.
The acquisition of Datawrkz, according to the company, will enhance its in-house capabilities to optimise customer acquisition spends as well as yields on ad monetisation of its large consumer base.
“We, at Nazara, are looking to build strong gaming ad tech offerings globally with the partnership with Datawrkz. We strongly believe that growth of gaming focused ad tech will be exponential in the coming decade across geographies with the growth of gamers and game publishers across freemium, web3.0 and skill based real money gaming,” Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal said.
He further added, “Ad tech companies with deep data processing capabilities and first party data ownership will emerge as winners in gaming focused ad tech and will help Datawrkz to create value for itself as well as for Nazara shareholders.”
Nazara debuted on the public market in March of last year, becoming India’s first publicly traded gaming company. Since then, the stock has nearly doubled.
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