Mumbai-based Nazara Technologies has been on an expanding spree in online gaming sector. Founded by Nitish Mittersain in 2000, the global gaming and sports media company boasting of a network of more than 100 million users in the country has invested in several viable start-ups over the last 18 months, including Nodwin Gaming, Next Wave Multimedia, Sportskeeda, Mastermind Sports, Paper Boat Apps, Moonglabs Technologies, CrimzonCode, Bakbuck and InstaSportz.
Having business operations in over 64 countries, Nazara Technologies is now in the headlines for increasing its stake in HalaPlay by buying Kae Capital‘s stake for 14.6 Crores. This huge investment in HalaPlay makes the company the majority stakeholder in the leading fantasy sports platform.
“The company has now gone ahead and bought Kae Capital’s stocks in Halaplay making it the majority investors in the fantasy sports vertical,” a statement by Nazara Technologies read.
Founded in 2017 by four BITS Pilani students – Swapnil Saurav, Prateek Anand, Ananya Singhal, and Aman Kesari, HalaPlay is a Bengaluru-based real-money fantasy sports portal where users can create a team, enter leagues and win prizes at the end of a match of cricket, football and kabaddi.
HalaPlay has been attracting attention of major investors. Delta Corp became a stakeholder in the company last year in March when it invested INR 15.50 Crores for buying 31,994 equity shares. Shortly after that, Delta’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Gaussian Network Pvt Ltd, struck a deal with HalaPlay to transfer Delta’s fantasy sports division, LeagueAdda to HalaPlay. With that deal, the combined share of Delta Corp and Gaussian Networks in HalaPlay increased to 19.55 percent.
The month of April 2020 saw Gaussian Networks and Nazara Tecnonolgies increasing their stakes in HalaPlay as the fantasy sports firm had to raise INR 2.94 Crores from both Gaussian and Nazara in April to keep it going after the COVID-19 severely affecting the fantasy gaming operations in India. With the latest investment of INR 14.6 Crores, Nazara becomes the majority stakeholder in HalaPlay!