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Gaming firm Nazara Technologies, which announced its foray into e-sports last year, has acquired a majority stake in NODWIN Gaming, an e-sports pioneer in India, for an undisclosed amount.
Following the acquisition, NODWIN will become an independent subsidiary of Nazara.
NODWIN, a venture among Akshat Rathee, Gautam Virk and JetSynthesys, pioneered e-sports in the country with established relationships with global gaming publishers and platforms including such as ESL (Turtle Entertainment) and Valve Corporation.
Nazara, with a 55 per cent stake in NODWIN, is furthering its commitment of developing the e-sports ecosystem to enable competitive online and offline gaming, create localised leagues and cups and boost e-sports as spectator sports in India, the company said.
The approach includes localised content creation around global events (ESL One, ESL Pro League, Intel Extreme Masters, The International by Valve) and organising local events by bringing in sponsors.
“Through this acquisition, we aim to provide Indian e-sports enthusiasts a robust player- and community-orientated e-sports ecosystem, in which players can thrive, improve their skills and become top competitors at an international level,” said Manish Agarwal, Chief Eexecutive Officer, Nazara Technologies.
“E-sports is one of the fastest growing sports worldwide. The acquisition adds to the credibility of NODWIN and opens up a wide vista of opportunities for Indian e-sports players to build careers domestically and internationally. It strengthens our ability to provide our key stakeholders better experiences and bigger opportunities to engage with our community,” said Akshat Rathee, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, NODWIN Gaming.
Nazara has recently been making a stream of investments in mobile gaming companies such as Nextwave Multimedia, Mastermind Sports, Moonglabs and HalaPlay, to strengthen its operations in India and other emerging markets across West AsiaEast, Africa and South-East Asia.
The e-sports market is growing at a fast pace. Global e-sports audience totalled 322 million in 2016, up 86 million since 2015. The number is likely to have grown to almost 386 million in 2017 and will continue to increase rapidly, at a CAGR of 14.0 per cent, reaching 665 million by 2021.
According to a Frost & Sullivan report, the Indian e-sports audience is still very small, with an estimated 2 million enthusiasts and 2 wo million occasional viewers, but is expected to grow more than fivefold by 2021.
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