Nazara Technologies acquires majority stake in ad tech firm Datawrkz

Nazara Technologies Limited, an India-based gaming and sports media company, on Tuesday announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire a 55 per cent stake in programmatic advertising and monetisation company Datawrkz, valuing the company at ₹225 crore (approximately $30 million) linked to its CY22 EBITDA performance. 

The company will acquire 37,498 equity shares of ₹1 each, representing 55 per cent of the equity share capital, on fully diluted basis, of Datawrkz Business Solutions Private Limited and its wholly owned subsidiaries from existing shareholders — namely, Senthil Govindan, Karthigha Dhanabalan , K Arunprabu, Mayank Khirwadkar, and Vishal Tukaranm Garale — at a consideration not exceeding ₹124 crore, in two tranches, it said in a regulatory filing.

Nazara will acquire a 33 per cent stake at ₹60 crore, of which ₹35 crore is partly payable in cash and the rest either in cash or swap of shares, in the first tranche.

The first tranche of investment will be completed by April 22. The company will reserve an option to acquire an additional 22 per cent in the second tranche, which is expected to be completed in Q4 FY23.

Founded in 2013 by IIM Ahmedabad alumnus Senthil Govindan, Datawrkz is a global advertising technology firm that offers programmatic advertising and ad monetisation to brands and publishers, respectively.

The firm has offices in the US, Singapore, and India, and functions as an independent trading desk for digital media strategy, planning and execution. Its self-serve product suite for advertisers, Vizibl, includes a demand-side platform and a customer data platform. On the supply side, it offers AdPrimus for publishers.

“Datawrkz tech offerings will enhance the in-house capabilities of Nazara for optimising its customer acquisition spends as well as enhance yields on ad monetisation of its large consumer base,” Nazara said. 

This ad revenue monetisation is expected to assist many of the companies in the ‘Friends of Nazara’ network.

“Further, there is an increasing symbiotic relationship between gaming companies and ad tech companies worldwide, as a combination of the two will be value accretive for both businesses,” it said.

Datawrkz, with this acquisition, will aim to become a key player in gaming, covering both demand- and supply-side offerings  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 create value for itself as well as for Nazara shareholders.”

Nitish Mittersain, Founder and Joint MD of Nazara Technologies, said, “As always, it’s a great moment for us to welcome a new friend to our ‘Friends of Nazara’ network and I believe Senthil and the entire Datawrkz team will add great value to what we are building at Nazara over the next few years.”

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 monetisation products with a sharp focus on the gaming vertical,” he added.

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