MUMBAI: Mobile gaming company Nazara Technologies has made an additional investment in fantasy sports startup Halaplay Technologies Pvt Ltd through an equity swap of stocks from Kae Capital worth Rs 146 million.
The fresh funding makes the Mumbai-headquartered firm a majority stakeholder in Bengaluru-based Halaplay.
Nazara Technologies has invested in Halaplay over the years in two tranches; first round of investment was carried out with Kae Capital in November 2017 and second round with Delta Corp Ltd. in March 2019. The company has now gone ahead and bought Kae Captial stocks in Halaplay making them the majority investors in the fantasy sports vertical.
Halaplay is a real money based daily fantasy sports (DFS) platform. Halaplay launched in 2017, has seen an explosive growth in the user base and total transactions since then.
In the past Nazara has invested in startups such as Nodwin Gaming, Next Wave Multimedia, Sportskeeda, Paper boat apps, Mastermind Sports, Moonglabs Technologies, Bakbuck, CrimzonCode, InstaSportz, NZWorld among others.
Halaplay is in the sports entertainment business, started by four batchmates from BITS Pilani – Goa. They launched their first product in the fantasy sports industry (halaplay.com) in Jan 2017 targeting serious and casual sports fans. They currently cover worldwide cricket, football & kabaddi leagues and plan on venturing into other sports.
Nazara is a leading global gaming and sports media company having business operations in 64 countries across emerging markets with services in India, Singapore, Dubai, Mauritius and subsidiary companies in Africa. The company has a diversified portfolio of gaming businesses across free to play mobile games, real money skill gaming, esports and gaming subscription services.
Nazara has a network of over 100 million players in India. The company has taken licensed mobile gaming rights to popular Indian IP characters like Chhota Bheem, Motu Patlu, Mighty Raju, Shikari Shambhu, Roll #21, Eena Meena Deeka, Oggy and the Cockroaches and Shin Chan. Nazara also owns IP’s like World Cricket Championship (WCC), EPIC Cricket, India Premiership and IPG.TV.
Nazara is also an investor in the gaming and sports ecosystem in India and has consummated transactions worth $50 million in the last three years. The company has acquired a majority stake in Next Wave Multimedia, Nodwin Gaming and HalaPlay.
Nazara’s other investee companies include Mastermind Sports, Moonglabs Technologies, Bakbuck, CrimzonCode, InstaSportz and NZWorld (NZWorld Kenya Ltd.) to set up operations for real money gaming in Kenya.
Founded by Nitish Mittersain in 2000, Nazara is backed by marquee investors which include West Bridge Capital, IIFL Special Opportunities Fund; Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Turtle Entertainment GmbH, the IP owner of the world’s largest esports franchise (ESL).
