Nazara acquires majority in ad tech company Datawrkz

Nazara Technologies Limited, India-based diversified gaming and sports media company, on Tuesday, announced that it has entered an agreement to acquire a 55 per cent stake in programmatic advertising and monetization company Datawrkz. The transaction values about Rs 225 crore (approx. USD 30 million) linked to CY 22 EBITDA performance.

In the first tranche, Nazara Technologies will acquire a 33 per cent stake for Rs 60 crores by April 2022. Of This Rs 60 crores, Nazara will pay Rs 35 crores in cash and the balance consideration of Rs 25 crores will be paid either in cash or swap of shares. The company reserves an option to acquire an additional 22 per cent in the second tranche that is expected to close in Q4FY23.

Datawrkz tech offerings will enhance the in-house capabilities of Nazara for optimizing its customer acquisition spending as well as enhance yields on ad monetization of its large consumer base. This ad revenue monetization is expected to assist many of the companies in the 'Friends of Nazara' network.

Further, there is an increasingly symbiotic relationship between gaming companies and ad tech companies worldwide as a combination of the two will be value accretive for both businesses. With this transaction, Datawrkz aims to establish itself as a key player in gaming, covering both demand and supply side offerings for the gaming ecosystem in the US and India.

Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal said, "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."

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."

Having acquired multiple companies over the past few years, Nazara has placed itself in a leading position in esports, interactive gaming and gamified early learning space with the 'Friends of Nazara' network.

Nazara has acquired a majority stake in Nodwin Gaming Pvt. Ltd (57.05%); Next Wave Multimedia Pvt. Ltd. (52.38%), which operates World Cricket Championship (WCC), the largest mobile-based cricket simulation game, in addition to investment in Absolute Sports Private Limited, which operates Sportskeeda (63.90 per cent) and Paper Boat Apps Private Limited (50.91 per cent) - gamified early learning subscription app and OpenPlay - Skill Gaming (100 per cent).

Datawrkz founder Senthil Govindan said, "We had started this company with a vision to disrupt the digital advertising space. Datawrkz was already on a fast track to achieve our objective with rapid growth and satisfied clients around the world. Through our partnership with Nazara, I see our pace accelerating further. While Datawrkz will be able to immediately bring our natural strengths to bear within the existing Nazara fold, this also gives both sides a tremendous opportunity to build global advertising and publisher monetization products with a sharp focus on the gaming vertical."

Founded in 2013, Datawrkz is a global advertising technology firm focused on accelerating user and revenue growth for clients through highly optimized digital advertising. With offices in the US, Singapore, and India, the firm functions as an Independent Trading Desk to power digital media strategy, planning and execution.

Datawrkz's self-serve product suite for advertisers - Vizibl, includes a Demand Side Platform as well as a Customer Data Platform. On the supply side, Datawrkz generates higher revenue for publishers through AdPrimus, its Supply-Side product set that drives higher user engagement, mediates between demand sources, and enables audience segmentation.

For the calendar year 2021, Datawrkz posted combined revenue of Rs 90.7 crore (approx. USD 12.1 million) and an EBIDTA margin of 12 per cent with around 70 per cent of its revenue coming from the US as per CY 2021 unaudited financial statements.