Sportskeeda, the global sports and gaming media subsidiary of Nazara Technologies, has promoted Ajay Pratap Singh as its chief executive officer, the company announced on November 16.
He will be taking over from Sportskeeda founder Porush Jain who has resigned as director and CEO with effect from November 16, 2022.
This appointment comes at a time when Nazara Technologies has also witnessed a recent change in its top management with founder Nitish Mittersain taking back the chief executive role on December 1 as the current chief executive Manish Agarwal plans to step down after a seven-and-half-year stint.
Sudhir Kamath, who recently joined the diversified gaming and sports media company as COO, will also join Sportskeeda's board as a non-executive director, the company said.
Jain will continue to be a shareholder and mentor to Singh in the transition phase, it said.
Singh joined Sportskeeda as Head of Marketing in 2019 and was promoted as COO in 2020. Prior to Sportskeeda, Singh has had stints at Dainik Bhaskar Group and Tally Solutions.
Under Singh's leadership, Sportskeeda stated that its user base has grown 2.5 times while revenues have risen fivefold. The platform generated revenue of Rs 58.1 crore for H1-FY23, nearly doubling from Rs 30.8 crore revenue in H1-FY22. EBITDA stood at Rs 17.4 crore for H1-FY23, as compared to Rs 10.2 crore a year back.
The United States is its biggest market, accounting for about 61.5 percent of the company's revenues, followed by India that contributed about 26 percent of the revenues.
Sportskeeda has also forayed into newer sports and formats in the past couple of years and had average monthly active users of 72.8 million as of September 2022.
"Sportskeeda continues to grow very rapidly across its core markets of the US and India, having doubled its revenue every year for the last three years. I am sure it will continue to make even greater strides under Ajay’s able leadership. The market for sports content is deep and offers huge growth opportunities in the coming years," said Mittersain.
Started in 2009 by Porush Jain, Sportskeeda is a sports news platform that covers a range of physical sports such as Cricket, Football, WWE, Basketball, Formula 1, MMA, and Kabaddi and Esports titles such as PUBG, Free Fire, Fortnite, and Valorant among others. It provides live scores, sport news, match fixtures and schedules, points tables, stats, team standings, highlights and match updates among others.
Nazara Technologies picked up a majority stake in Sportskeeda for Rs 44 crore in 2019.
On November 16, the diversified gaming and sports media firm announced that it has completed buying an additional 6.05 percent stake in Sportskeeda for a cash consideration of Rs 19.99 crore, thereby increasing its stake from 65 percent to 70.71 percent on a fully diluted basis.
In a stock market filing, Nazara Technologies said this acquisition was done in order to consolidate its shareholding in profitable subsidiaries.
Read: We're very focused on scaling up our existing verticals: Nazara founder Nitish Mittersain
Sportskeeda is part of Nazara Technologies' esports segment that also includes Nodwin Gaming. In H1-FY23, the segment generated revenues of Rs 238.9 crore, contributing about 49 percent of the firm's revenue for the period.
Sportskeeda stated that the company has recently strengthened its leadership team by hiring Anirudh Kumar as its chief strategy officer. Kumar previously had stints at Matrix Partners, the Directi Group, and Snapdeal.
"It was a great learning experience working alongside Porush. Being the brand's founder, he was instrumental in taking Sportskeeda to where it is today. With his continued guidance as a mentor to me and the team, we hope to take Sportskeeda to even greater heights" Singh said.
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