CEO Nitish Mittersain takes leadership of Nazara

• ByStartupStory     |    December 1, 2022

Nitish Mittersain, the creator of publicly traded gaming business Nazara Technologies Ltd., has assumed leadership as the organization’s CEO as of this Thursday. The change happened after Manish Agarwal, the former CEO of Nazara, left his position to pursue his entrepreneurial endeavours. He does, however, still own 1.15% of the business.

Since Manish and I had been working with closely for the previous seven years, Mittersain stated, “I feel that the least disruptive option to accomplish the transfer was for me to undertake the CEO job again at a time when Nazara is trying to grow quicker and keep the momentum.”

“With the team, I will be leading the company. We also hired Sudhir Kamath to be the company’s COO, so I think we have a really strong team to move the firm forward. We will now put more of an emphasis on the organic growth of our current businesses and on making some significant strategic acquisitions in the coming year “Added he.

Mittersain announced on the social media site LinkedIn that he will start working as the CEO of Nazara as of today, December 1st. “I am returning as Nazara CEO as of today and am looking forward to making a significant impact filled with good will and diligence!, “He posted on Twitter as well.

“All the best @mittersain and our ‘Jay-Veeru’ Jodi will continue to rock always and all the time,” Agarwal replied to his tweet. Nazara is a varied gaming and sports media platform that Mittersain founded in 2000. The company provides gamified early learning, eSports, mobile gaming, skill-based and fantasy trivia games, and it is active in markets like North America and Africa.

According to records, the company’s net profit for the July-September quarter of the fiscal year 2022–23 increased by 13.7% year over year (YoY) to 17.4 crore. In Q2 FY23, its operating revenue was 263.8 crore, up from 129.6 crore in the same quarter the previous year. Nazara made its first acquisition in the US in August when it paid $10.4 million in cash for the kids’ interactive entertainment company WildWorks. Seven months before, it had acquired a 55% share in Datawrkz, a business that specialises in programmatic advertising and monetisation. 

Over the years, Nazara has made numerous investments and acquisitions. In the previous year, Nazara paid around 2 crore for a share in Rusk Media Ltd. and spent 186.4 crore on the skill-based gaming firm OpenPlay.

Previously, it supported the educational app for preschoolers Kiddopia and bought a majority share in Sports Unity, a maker of video games, and Sportskeeda, a platform for multisport content. In 2018, it also purchased the eSports platform Nodwin Gaming. As of the quarter ended September 2022, late expert public market investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala owned about 10% of Nazara Technologies.

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