Diversified gaming and sports media company Nazara Technology has agreed to acquire a 55 percent stake in programmatic advertising and monetization company Datawrkz with an investment of INR 124 crore. Datawrkz has been valued at Rs 225 crore for this deal.
Nazara Technologies will acquire a 33 percent stake for INR 60 crores in the first tranche by April 2022. Of this INR 60 crores, Nazara will pay INR 35 crores in cash, and the balance consideration of INR 25 crores will be paid either in cash or swap of shares.
Under the agreement for this acquisition, an additional 22 percent stake can also be acquired in the second phase. Given this deal, Nazara Technology has further said that this deal is likely to be completed by the fourth quarter of the financial year (FY) 2023.
The transaction will assist companies in the ‘Friends of Nazara’ network
Datawrkz is a Bangalore-based company founded in 2013 by Senthil Govindan. It is an advertising technology firm that provides programmatic advertising and ad monetization solutions to publishers, agencies and multiple brands.
Datawrkz’s product portfolio includes products like Vizibl, AdPrimu, BidAmp. Through which it provides technology solutions related to advertisements to its customers.
This ad revenue monetization is expected to assist many companies in the ‘Friends of Nazara’ network. Further, there is an increasingly symbiotic relationship between gaming 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.”
Currently, Nazara has a considerable user acquisition cost that comprises almost 20 percent of their revenues or a little higher. With the acquisition, the gaming startup will be able to deploy these products and technologies, and the team’s experience will optimize their user acquisition cost.
On this acquisition, Nazara Technology has said that acquiring the stake in Datawrkz will enhance Nazara Technology’s in-house capability. With this, the company will get new customers and due to the large consumer base, the company’s income will increase.
Gaming focus ad-tech to grow exponentially
The 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.
“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,” said Manish Agarwal, CEO Nazara Technologies.
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.
Meanwhile, 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.
