Ajay Pratap Singh is named CEO of Nazara’s Sportskeeda, and founder Porush Jain steps down

• ByStartupStory     |    November 17, 2022

Ajay Pratap Singh has been appointed to the chief executive officer at Sportskeeda, a division of Nazara Technologies that covers international sports and gaming. The announcement was made on November 16. He will succeed Porush Jain, the founder and CEO of Sportskeeda, who resigned with effect from November 16, 2022. This hiring coincides with a recent change in management at Nazara Technologies, where founder Nitish Mittersain will assume the position of CEO on December 1 in place of outgoing CEO Manish Agarwal, who intends to retire after serving in that position for seven and a half years. The diversified gaming and sports media company recently hired Sudhir Kamath as COO. He will now serve as a non-executive director on the board of Sportskeeda, the company announced.

According to the statement, Jain will remain Singh’s mentor and shareholder during the transition period. Singh joined Sportskeeda in 2019 as the Head of Marketing before being given the position of COO in 2020. Singh worked with Tally Solutions and the Dainik Bhaskar Group before Sportskeeda.

Sportskeeda reported that under Singh’s direction, its user base increased by 2.5 times and its revenue increased by five times. For H1-FY23, the platform brought in Rs 58.1 crore in revenue, nearly doubling its H1-FY22 revenue of Rs 30.8 crore. EBITDA increased from Rs 10.2 crore to Rs 17.4 crore for the first half of FY23.

The company’s largest market, the United States, provided roughly 61.5 percent of its revenues, followed by India with about 26 percent. As of September 2022, Sportskeeda had 72.8 million average monthly active users and had expanded into more recent sports and forms. “Sportskeeda has doubled its revenue every year for the past three years and is still expanding quickly in both of its main markets, the US and India. It will undoubtedly continue to advance under Ajay’s capable direction. There are many opportunities for growth in the market for sports content in the upcoming years “Mittersain said. Sportskeeda, a sports news website founded in 2009 by Porush Jain, covers a variety of physical sports, including cricket, football, the WWE, basketball, Formula 1, MMA, and kabaddi, as well as Esports games like PUBG, Free Fire, Fortnite, and Valorant, among others. Among other things, it offers live scores, sports news, match schedules, stats, team standings, highlights, and match updates. Sportskeeda’s majority ownership was acquired by Nazara Technologies for Rs 44 crore in 2019. With the purchase of an additional 6.05 per cent stake in Sportskeeda for a cash payment of Rs 19.99 crore, the diversified gaming and sports media company increased its stake from 65 per cent to 70.71 per cent on a fully diluted basis, according to an announcement made on November 16.

Nazara Technologies claimed in a stock market filing that it made this transaction to increase the size of its stake in successful subsidiaries. The esports division of Nazara Technologies, which also includes Nodwin Gaming, includes Sportskeeda. The segment contributed about 49% of the company’s revenue for the first half of FY23, or Rs 238.9 crore, in revenue.

Sportskeeda claimed that by appointing Anirudh Kumar as its chief strategy officer, the business had lately bolstered its executive team. Before Snapdeal, Kumar worked with Matrix Partners, the Directi Group, and other companies. “Working with Porush was an excellent learning opportunity. He founded the company and was crucial in bringing Sportskeeda to where it is now. We hope to take Sportskeeda to even higher heights with his continued mentoring of me and the team “Said Singh.

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