Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed recreation startup Nazara Technologies kicks off India’s tech IPO rush

Nazara Technologies Ltd, the cricket video games developer backed by billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, grew to become the primary Indian gaming know-how firm to hunt a market debut as cellular leisure takes off the world over’s No. 2 smartphone area.
The Mumbai-headquartered startup filed preliminary public providing paperwork with India’s market regulator on Friday. Its impending debut on the native exchanges might encourage different Indian startups to faucet public markets, after years of explosive progress in cellular and web utilization created large non-public companies from Paytm to Walmart Inc’s Flipkart.
Founded by gamer Nitish Mittersain in 2000, when he was a university undergrad, Nazara is among the many companies which have benefited from a world increase in smartphone gaming that started even earlier than the pandemic drove tens of millions on-line. Mittersain began the corporate with 30 million rupees borrowed from family and friends, solely to get derailed through the dotcom bust. The agency spent its first decade clearing debt, however steadily constructed market share by buying fellow gaming startups.

It’s now searching for to be among the many first main Indian startups to go public at a time of burgeoning investor curiosity within the nation’s know-how sphere. Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google are pouring billions into partnerships with native operator Jio Platforms Inc, whereas Amazon.com Inc founder Jeff Bezos has mentioned that “the 21st century is going to be the Indian century.”
Nykaa E-Retail Pvt, backed by TPG, is claimed to be planning an IPO as quickly as this 12 months that might worth the Indian on-line beauty retailer at greater than $3 billion. Food supply startup Zomato Pvt has mentioned it’s going to file for an IPO within the first half of 2021. Nazara plans to supply as much as 4.96 million fairness shares on the market, at a face worth of 4 rupees every, the submitting confirmed.

The arrival of low cost smartphones and cut-price wi-fi knowledge charges for 1.3 billion folks has galvanized progress for Nazara and its friends. The firm’s platform hosts a number of content material classes and is lively in esports, whereas commanding a share of the cellular cricket gaming phase with titles like World Cricket Championship. Nazara, whose backers embrace Plutus Wealth Management and Jhunjhunwala, a person inventory investor in contrast domestically to Warren Buffett, operates in 52 international locations from North America and the Middle East to Africa and Southeast Asia.