Diversified gaming and sports media platform Nazara Technologies is acquiring a 55 percent stake in programmatic advertising and monetisation company Datawrkz for a total consideration of upto Rs 124 crore, with the company valued up to Rs 225 crore.
The company said the deal is being done through two tranches. In the first tranche, it will acquire a 33 percent stake for Rs 60 crore, of which Rs 35 crore is partly payable in cash and the remaining 25 crore will be paid either through cash or share swap. It reserves an option to acquire an additional 22 percent in the second tranche that is expected to close in Q4 FY23, the firm said in a regulatory filing.
Founded in 2013 by Senthil Govindan, Bengaluru-based Datawrkz is an advertising technology firm that offers publishers, agencies and brands a range of programmatic advertising and ad monetization solutions to improve their user and revenue growth.
The firm's product comprises of Vizibl that includes a real-time bidding platform as well as a customer data platform. On the supply side, Datawrkz says it drives higher revenue for publishers from their ads through its suite of 'high engagement' ad units called AdPrimus and a header bidding and mediation solution BidAmp, the company said in statement. Header bidding enables publishers to simultaneously offer ad space out to several supply-side platforms or advertising exchanges at once.
The company also serves as an independent trading desk to power digital media strategy, planning and execution on behalf of its agency and brand clients in a 'transparent financial model'.
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For the calendar year 2021, Datawrkz posted a combined revenue of Rs 90.7 crore and EBITDA margin of 12 percent with around 70 percent of its revenue coming from the United States.
Nazara Technologies said this acquisition will improve its in-house capabilities to optimise customer acquisition spends as well as improve yields on ad monetisation of its large consumer base.
"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" said Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal.
Read: We are now looking at larger deals as our scale is increasing: Nazara Technologies CEO
Datawrkz founder Senthil Govindan said this deal will further accelerate the company's growth.
"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 said.
The ad revenue monetisation solution is also expected to help several portfolio companies of Nazara Technologies, which the company terms as ‘Friends of Nazara’ network.
These companies include Nodwin Gaming and SportsKeeda in esports segment, Next Wave Multimedia, developer of World Cricket Championship (WCC), the largest mobile-based cricket simulation game, Paper Boat Apps, developers of the popular gamified learning app Kiddopia, and Halaplay, Qunami and OpenPlay in the skill based real money gaming vertical.
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