Hey, Anuj. Hi. Good afternoon, Sudhir. Good afternoon, Nitish. We'll just wait for another few seconds till Nitish joins us. Nitish, if you could please switch on your audio video. Sorry, everyone. We'll just begin shortly. We're just waiting for Nitish to - yeah, here we go. Good afternoon, Nitish. Hi. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to you all. Thank you for joining us for another Valorem CXO Meet. My name is Anuj Sonpal, CEO of Valorem Advisors. Today we are hosting the management of Nazara Technologies Limited. Firstly, on behalf of the company, I would like to thank you all for participating in this event. Let me also take this opportunity to thank the management for participating with us today and for giving us this opportunity to host them. As you already know by now, the Valorem CXO Meet is first of its kind virtual analyst meet event series. Our intention with these virtual CXO meets is to take advantage of technology platforms like this by reaching out to a wider audience to create a better understanding and bring awareness about our client company's fundamental business, provide insights into their specific industry, financials, and future growth strategies. The format of this analyst meet will primarily be in a Q&A interview format where I will start off by asking the management some broad-level questions, and then we'll move on to some questions from the participants. Please note that if you would like to ask any questions to the management, you can use the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen to post them there. I will ask the management these questions on your behalf after I have been done with the initial broad questions. Before we begin, let me mention a short cautionary statement. Some of the statements made in today's meeting may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ from those anticipated. Such statements are based on management's beliefs as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to management. Audiences are cautioned not to place any undue reliance on these forward-looking statements in making any investment decisions. Let me now introduce you to the management participating with us today. We firstly have Mr. Nitish Mittersain. Nitish is a dynamic and visionary founder and CEO of Nazara Technologies. He has played a pivotal role in transforming Nazara from a nascent gaming startup into one of India's leading mobile gaming and sports media companies. With his forward-thinking approach and commitment to innovation, he has successfully steered Nazara Technologies to new heights, solidifying his presence in both Indian and international markets. His entrepreneurial journey, backed by his deep understanding of technology and the gaming landscape, has made him a key figure in shaping the future of the Indian gaming industry. We also have with us Mr. Sudhir Kamath, who is the Chief Operating Officer of the company. He's an alumnus of Delhi University and IIM Ahmedabad. He brings over 20 years of experience in strategic consulting with McKinsey, private equity, as well as operations and entrepreneurship. Now, without any further delay, let's begin. So my first question, I'm going to start with Nitish. Nitish, you are often considered as a pioneer in the Indian gaming industry and have taken Nazara to new heights. Could you start for the audience, some of the audience today who is probably new to the company and also a catch-up to some of the people who may have looked at you a while back, could you start with giving a little bit of a brief history and background of how you started this journey and also how you've transformed it over, how you've transformed Nazara over the years? Over to you, Nitish. Sure, Anuj. I'll try and compress a 25-year journey in five minutes if I can, so basically, I got into computers, technology, and gaming at a young age, got introduced to gaming at five, started coding games in basic language when I was seven years old, and it really became a passion for me and kind of my whole world became the world of technology and gaming. I was studying here in Mumbai, doing my college here in Mumbai, and when I looked around my friends, and this is the late 1990s, I really saw a lot of enthusiasm for gaming among my peer group, and coming from a business family, I've just felt that this could be a large opportunity and gaming would become big in India sometime in the future. That's really what made me start Nazara in the late 1990s in Mumbai. Yeah, probably I was a decade too early because the infrastructure didn't exist. Consumers didn't have devices. Internet speeds on mobile phones wasn't there. Actually, the mobile phones themselves were barely there. So we started as an online gaming company. As our mobile penetration came in, we started migrating towards mobile because I realized that in India, the penetration of mobile phone devices with consumers would be very large as compared to PC or console. And therefore, India would become a mobile-first gaming country. So we kind of pivoted into mobile in 2003, 2004. And I think one of the big innovations that Nazara did in those early years, especially between around this 2007 period, is to create a Netflix type of model for gaming subscription, which was sold by mobile operators. And we built our technology in-house that enabled that, localized it for the local market dynamics. And that was very successful. We worked with Airtel and all these large telcos and monetized very well because at that point of time, you didn't have UPI, etc. And the only way to build consumers, micro-subscription pricing, was through the mobile operators. So we did that very successfully in 2007. And once that model was established, we took it to over 50 countries and over 150 mobile operators. From 2007- 2014, we kept our head down and really executed that very efficiently. To give you a perspective, till then, till 2007, Nazara had raised all of INR 12 crore from WestBridge Capital. And by the time 2014 came around, we had over INR 200 crores sitting in a bank, all accumulated from the profits we had made. In 2014, I was realizing that gaming was already becoming. The mobile phones had spread, the data had become better, digital payments was coming up. That original dream of doing a lot more in gaming, I kind of started refocusing on that in 2014. And over the years, I realized that gaming can be also tricky in the sense that if you don't build the business model correctly, you can become stuck like a one-hit wonder, etc. And I didn't want to go into that kind of a path. So I wanted to build a diversified, profitable gaming platform that could sustain over a long time. And I realized that if I could sustain for a long time, then the opportunity in markets like India would only continue to be very large. From that perspective, we actually started what we call Friends of Nazara. We started acquiring stakes in companies that were operating in areas of direction that we wanted to get into, whether it's gamified learning, whether it's esports, or whatever the mega trends we were spotting. We worked with many founders and management teams, kind of acquired majority stakes, and paneled them on this Nazara platform, and then rolled up our sleeves and started working with them very closely. This model has emerged as today our core focus, where we acquire businesses. They run fairly in a decentralized manner, and Nazara adds value for different businesses at different times in different ways. So we may add value from the user acquisition expertise we built over 15 years or the way we look at data analytics. We may look at pricing models because these are things we did for a really long time while running our telco business. We may use our network to open up a lot of doors and also bring our core DNA that we have kind of developed over many years on focusing on profitable growth and cash flows to many of these businesses. We saw that when we got into this in three, four years, many of the businesses we acquired, we were able to potentially 10x their revenues while keeping them profitable. Many examples like Kiddopia, Sportskeeda, NODWIN Gaming are examples of this. Fast forward today, I think we listed the company in 2021, and it's been a little bit over three years. I think we're really picking up momentum now. We've not only built a credible brand name here in India, but we've built it globally, especially in Western markets. We see huge opportunities in also acquiring businesses in Western markets, which we have done in recent times, whether it's WildWorks in the U.S. or most recently, Fusebox Games in the U.K., and then accelerate these businesses based on the expertise we have built. So I think that model is working very well for us. We are very excited with the potential. I think two things I'd like to say. Gaming in India is going to emerge, in my view, as a predominant entertainment and socializing platform online in the years to come, and I think sooner than later. I think India will also make a large impact on gaming globally, especially with the advent of AI, etc., which will help us catch up on a lot of fronts compared to Western or Chinese developers. So we're very excited. It's still very much day one for us and looking forward to the next few years building this to the next level. Great. Thank you, Nitish, for that very good story and congratulations on this amazing journey of yours. Let's move to my next question. Let me ask Sudhir, as the COO of the company, can you enlighten our viewers today just a little bit on the business segments that we have, which is Gaming, Esports, Ad Tech, and also within them, just explain a little bit about the constituents of each of them, the kind of games that we have, what constitutes an Esports, Ad Tech, etc.? Sure. Let me just take that. Let me start with the gaming segment. So as Anuj correctly said, we have gaming, esports, and advertising tech. I'll take each of them in turn. Let me start with gaming. Within gaming, we have a number of studios. Historically, we may have had more than 50% control, but now increasingly, almost all of our gaming studios are now 100% owned by us. That's a recent change for some of those studios. At the time of IPO, about three years back, we had a gamified early learning business, which is called Kiddopia. That business has continued to scale and does roughly INR 200 crore revenue. It produces a game which is targeted at young kids, so three to six-year-old, and is the number two or number three game in that segment in the U.S. market, which is the largest market for that kind of game. We also have a game called Animal Jam, which targets slightly older kids, so roughly in the age to 12 kind of age segment. And again, that game is the market leader in that space. This game is built by a studio in the U.S., which we acquired a couple of years back and has continued to grow since then and improve its profitability. Third, Nitish mentioned Fusebox, which is a studio based out of the U.K., which does narrative-based games in collaboration with IP owners. So there's a very popular TV show called Love Island, which is big in the U.K. and U.S. They've created a game around that, which does very well. It also has quite a good following, the game itself, in India. They also have the rights for Big Brother, which is the parent game for Bigg Boss, which you may have seen in India, and that's a new game that they're developing, which will come out sometime around April or May of next year. Apart from this, we have World Cricket Championship, which is a cricket simulation game where you can do batting and bowling online, and that's been one of India's most popular cricket simulation games, India as well as the rest of the world, and that, again, is something that we have been growing, and that's recently acquired a second game called UTP Ultimate Teen Patti, which is not real money, just a casual social card game. Apart from this, we then have the real money gaming segment, which in India is actually the largest segment otherwise. We have 100% ownership of a company called OpenPlay, which has a game called Classic Rummy, which has been around for many years and offers rummy and also fantasy sports to its customers, and recently, we announced a big investment, about INR 1,000 crores, in a company called Moonshine, which is PokerBaazi and SportsBaazi. Now, PokerBaazi is India's number one game in the poker space with real money, and that's a business which continues to grow 30%-40% each year. Currently, we will own about 48% in that business as the transaction closes. We are in the final stages of that, and we also have a convertible debt, which we've invested in that business, so all of this was broadly on the gaming side. If you move to the esports side, there are two large businesses in that. One is NODWIN, which is India's largest esports company and is one of the top three esports companies in the world now. NODWIN itself has multiple assets and businesses within it, including Comic Con India, which is an iconic sort of live event which happens in multiple cities, eight or nine cities now. We also have NH7 Weekender, which is one of India's leading music festivals. There's a company called Freaks 4U Gaming, which NODWIN acquired recently, which is Germany's number one esports company. And they also have a strong footprint in markets like Turkey, the Middle East, and Singapore. And in all of these, the common thread is that NODWIN has the expertise and the team here, which can deliver events across all of the esports space. The second big business that we have within esports is Sportskeeda, which is news media reporting around sports and content creation. That is a business, again, which has been growing very rapidly, just like NODWIN. NODWIN has been growing more than around 40%-50% a year for the last few years, many years now. Sportskeeda itself has also been growing about 30%-40% a year and also has a very strong EBITDA profile. That's a business, again, which started with India and cricket, but expanded to the US to the extent that now more than 60% of its revenue comes from the US market. It covers all the sports which are popular in the US as well, not just cricket and others. Lastly, coming to advertising tech, we had acquired a company called Datawrkz. Datawrkz offers both demand side and supply side services, as I said. So it helps content owners to monetize their content. It also helps advertisers to acquire users. And it offers both of these services to its clients. We've also been pushing it to move more towards the product side, where some of these services, they have now converted into products which can be offered on a SaaS kind of a model, self-serve to their customers. And that has begun to scale up and significantly is improving the EBITDA profile of that business. So, Anuj, I think in a nutshell, those are the businesses. I think we can go through more detail if there are questions on these specific ones. Sure. Thanks, Sudhir. Thanks for that overview. Let me go back to Nitish for one more question. Nitish, in the last question, you did talk a little bit about the acquisitions we've made and some very interesting ones. For some of the viewers today, can you explain this strategy? We have obviously been very aggressive in organic growth. So can you explain this strategy of growth and what are you trying to do to create by acquiring so many companies? And also, how do you see Nazara really shape out, let's say, five, 10 years down the line? Sure. So in terms of our M&A strategy, like I was telling you, we figured that in the gaming world, the zero to one can be very time-consuming. And the graveyard for zero to one is very high with 80%, 90%, 95% failure. And because we wanted to grow fast, we realized that us getting stuck in the zero to one game at that phase or stage of our journey would slow us down considerably. We found our core competency to be able to acquire businesses that have completed the zero to one journey and then help them accelerate on the one to 10 journey. And if you look at our acquisitions in the past, I would refer back to the ones we did in 2018, 2019, 2020. When we acquired Kiddopia, it was doing about INR 15 crores-INR 20 crores of revenue. But we did see that, and I'll share a couple of specific examples because that will give better light on how we acquire the business and also what we do with it. So in Kiddopia's case, when we acquired it, they were selling these games for premium, what we call the premium business, which means you paid a certain fee to own the game. And because we came from many, many years of running subscription services on gaming, we did realize that this would do much better on subscription. The ARPU would be higher. The product fit was already there. Kids were already loving it. So we worked with the team to tweak the business model to a more subscription-driven model, which increased the ARPU significantly, doubled the ARPUs of the product. And that allowed us to spend a lot more money in the user acquisition. Again, where we brought in our expertise of UA over many years. How do you do predictive modeling of LTV, which is lifetime value of the customer when you acquire the customer, etc.? And that allowed us to 10x that business in a short span of three years while remaining profitable, right? Of course, thereafter, the business kind of plateaued because of a multitude of reasons: post-COVID normalization and Apple privacy issues. But we're very confident that we will break out again and very much on it, which is why we recently acquired 100% stake in that business. Similarly, when we bought Sportskeeda, I think it was 2019 or 2020, it was about a INR 15 crore revenue business. But we spotted that the core engine was very interesting, the way they were curating content. And we also saw that the U.S. would be a large potential market for it. We kind of refocused the team to the U.S. because that was monetizing much better. I saw a couple of questions around Sportskeeda here. I think in the last four years, we have maybe multiplied the revenue by 15x or so. Again, we had a very profitable business, running a very profitable business. Sportskeeda today is number five. It ranks between number five or number six in the U.S. Not only in India, but in the U.S., it is number five or six sports destination. I think what we found is that our ability to take these businesses, make sure that they generate cash and grow over a period of time, in a fairly short period of time, I would say three, four-year period of time, has been far more lucrative for us compared to us trying to start a new business and spend three, four years trying to get it to gestation. That said, we'll never do zero to one businesses or organic businesses. Surely we will do. Will Nazara attempt a AAA title out of India and spend $10 million, $20 million, $30 million in five years on it? Maybe we will, but at the right time. At this point of time, we are not doing that. In terms of where do we see ourselves in five to 10 years, I think we've got a fantastic platform now and an engine that's running. And we have two tailwinds. One is the Indian market growth itself, which I think will be compound over the next five, seven years. And we can take a lot of benefit out of that. The second is the global play that we have already established now with our game studio business. I think can see us scale our revenues and profitability significantly. We're also starting to now, till now, we've in the last five years run a very highly decentralized model with the focus being on standalone businesses. There was a question I saw here around synergies, etc. One belief I've had is that in the M&A game, one place where you can really go wrong is when you account for too many synergies while acquiring a business, because what tends to happen is you overthink these synergies, and then you value these synergies and pay top dollar for it, and then in reality, when these synergies don't happen, you're kind of left holding the bag. So the way we've approached M&A is that while we, of course, want to buy businesses that would have synergy and we anticipate some synergies, when we buy the business, we actually discount synergies altogether, and at least for the first year or two, we focus very much on the core business and its core performance. So we want to ensure that the core is very strong, and then we start kind of trying to link the synergies. Now, this year, I would say the last few months, and one main agenda in 2025 for us is to drive more synergies, and for that, what we are doing is we are creating centers of excellence on a few strategic areas which we have identified. One is user acquisition because user acquisition is important and relevant across our businesses. The second is data analytics because gaming is a very data-driven business if you want to perform well, and the third is AI or artificial intelligence because if we move fast on it, we can really take advantage of it. If we don't move fast on it, we will get disrupted. There's no question about it, right, so I think right now, a lot of work is going on at a central level on these three areas. And we're kind of servicing all our businesses and starting to service all our businesses with common knowledge sharing, common tools, etc., to drive some of these synergies. So yeah, I think that's where we are going right now. Great. Thank you so much, Nitish. So we'll start taking questions from the participants. And as you have already tried to address a few of them, we'll try to take and address as many of them as possible. So participants, once again, if you have any questions, please use the Q&A button and type them there. I'll try to ask management as many of them as possible. So the first question is from Vishal. And he talks about, "Do you see Nazara evolving into the next Indian Tencent within this decade, given the current momentum in funding and M&A?" I think you've already addressed this to us on to an extent, but any comments on that? Yeah, I think we have developed into our own unique model. And while there would be similarities with the overall Tencent model, it's not an exact replica. But I think there is a huge opportunity for Nazara to emerge as a really large gaming company out of India, for India and out of India. And I think we're very confident that that's the path we are pursuing. Sure. Next question from Chirag. "Could you throw some light which segment will you be focusing more on? Will it be gamified learning, real money game, esports, or others? And could you give some understanding on how the revenue is made in each segment and how leverage is played out for increasing profitability? I'll answer the first part of the question, which is for us, given the way our structure is built. One thing that's very interesting has developed in the Nazara structure is that because of our loosely held decentralized model, which is run by very passionate founders or management teams, the bandwidth at Nazara level is highly scalable. We can enter areas and drive them. Because once we enter a particular area, let's say gamified learning, right, through Kiddopia or even WildWorks's Animal Jam that we have, we already have a very strong management who understands that space. And then for us, can continue to grow it organically as well as inorganically. Same goes for our esports business or now the real money gaming business. In terms of how will they all grow, I mean, we are obviously chasing growth across categories. But I think different businesses in different markets will grow at different paces. The second part, I think it's a very detailed question. If I start answering that now, probably this whole call will go and just answering that out. But I think our quarterly presentation answers most of those points. Sure. Sudhir, would you like to maybe quickly attempt that just to kind of give the broad revenue models across the thing rather than each game's revenue model or each segment's revenue model? Yeah, I think I won't dive into each one, but maybe just at a high-level, right? I mean, one belief we have is that at the group level, we do want to be diversified across different revenue models. So that if there is turbulence in any particular kind of model, we're not really held hostage to that, right? But just to take a high-level stab, so some games, and for us, the leading model initially with games had been subscriptions, as Nitish mentioned, from the telco heritage onto Kiddopia, Animal Jam, a few others. This is essentially where a customer is buying a straightforward subscription to play the game and then enjoy that for a year, two years, or as long as it goes, right? The second model, which is very common, is in-app purchases. This is really meaningful in the Western markets more so than the Indian markets. Games like Animal Jam, Fuseb ox follow that quite strongly. This is where somebody is making a purchase within the game for a good that is useful in the game itself. The third is advertising. Advertising is something that traditionally has worked across the world. In India, a lot of the games were largely advertising-supported. WCC fits into that bucket. That is still a place where I think a lot more evolution needs to happen in terms of especially pricing around advertising. That's something that will come. The fourth model is real money gaming, where it's a transaction fee kind of a structure, which is essentially a player is playing with real money every time they make a transaction. Effectively, there's a small percentage of that which goes to the operator of the game, which is the studio that we have. So within gaming, these are the four predominant models. If you come to the esports side of the business, there's a couple more. So one is marketing support, which is unlike say digital ads. This is if you're doing a physical event, which is an esports tournament or a music concert, then tying up with large brands, people like it could be a Coke, it could be a Hyundai, it could be an Acer, whichever one. But those kinds of guys or large brand partnerships is one big model in that. And those events obviously also then have ticketing and F&B kind of revenue streams, which also then kick in. So those are slightly different models which exist there. Thanks, Sudhir. Moving on to the next question from Keval Shah, the growth rates have been muted since four, five quarters due to understandable reasons. From when can we expect sizable pickup in growth rates? Well, I'd like to first say thank you for understanding. But more importantly, I think from a Nazara perspective, there are a couple of things I'd like to say. One is the whole reason we run a diversified platform is that gaming businesses do get impacted because of a multitude of reasons. This could be technology changes, consumer preferences changes, and also regulatory changes, right? And therefore, I think our platform still provides a lot of stability even at a time where there may be a multitude of such reasons impacting us. Second point is we have always chased quality of revenue and the right approach to the growth of revenue rather than growth at all costs. For us, as much as the revenue matters, our profitability matters, our cash flows matter. And we don't like to burn cash just for growing, right? That's the second point. I think the third point, irrespective of first point or second point, all that matters really is the growth, right? We understand that. We are very hopeful that in coming quarters, we will have much better growth than what we've seen in the last two, three, four quarters. Many of our businesses are looking good. We will see how that pans out in actual results. Thank you, Nitish. Next question, let's take from Prajal Jain. "Do we have any plans for creating platforms like AppsF or Bharat for game development? I think what AppsF or Bharat shows, which Sri Mandir and other products are there, is that how the Indian market can have a lot of innovation that is very locally relevant, right? And what that means for gaming is that a India-first or an India-native gaming approach could actually see to a lot of breakouts. Still now, in the last few years, gaming revenues in India haven't been large enough to attempt AA or AAA titles that are very locally relevant, which I believe will eventually be very successful. We definitely intend to go down that path. Right now, we have started with the Nazara Publishing platform, where we are starting to publish games that are relevant for the Indian consumers on behalf of Indian developers, as well as use or leverage global partnerships and global games, but help localize them and culturalize them for the Indian market. I think taking a leap from AppsForBharat, locally relevant content will do well. And it's not about just localizing in terms of changing the language to Hindi or something. It's about really making it connect with the Indian audience. So yes, we will go down that path. Thank you. Next question is from Chirag Maru. He wants to understand what are our strategies to grow active users or monthly active users in high double digits and make sure that the attrition rate of users are low? Also, what is our active user and attrition rate product-wise? I think that active user and attrition rate product-wise is there in the presentation, but let's talk about the growth aspect. So like I mentioned earlier, we have created enhanced support now on user acquisition at a central level, where we are also leveraging AI, etc., to become more efficient in it. Because growing your user base, there are two key cogs to it. One is the user acquisition, how efficiently you do it. And second is the retention of the customer, which through tools like data analytics, through better personalization, through AI can we achieve. So there's a lot of work going on here. Again, different businesses of ours are approaching it differently. So for example, I can give you maybe a couple of examples. Kiddopia, for example, today is leading on partnering with Popular IP, which I think is something we've spoken about in the last few quarters. And hopefully, we will make specific announcements around that in partnerships in the near future. In terms of how do we get popular kids IP into Kiddopia, which will drive a lot of organic traffic. Today, one of the big challenges we face with Kiddopia is to be able to scale paid user acquisition. But these IP partnerships could actually break through on that front. And we've seen other peers of ours being able to do that. So we're doing that. In something like PokerBaazi, for example, there's a large brand spend at this point of time. They have brand ambassadors like Shahid Kapoor, and they're one of the main sponsors for Shark Tank. So they are down a path of, on that business, down a path of really creating this large brand, which continues to then create a lot of awareness and stickiness to the platform over the years to come. So I think this is how we are really approaching it right now. Sure. Thank you. Next question is from Keval Shah. "Is PokerBaazi and Freaks 4U currently profitable at EBIT levels? If not, by when do we see this breaking even? I would say it is profitable. We haven't given out specific numbers. But which I just mentioned in the earlier answer was that they have large brand spends at this point of time in the range of INR 150 crores-INR 200 crores a year. And we will continue to support that because I think they are the market leader by far today. And they have the opportunity to really be the brand in that space for the decades to come. So I think today that marketing dollar or the branding dollar that's going in is going to pay very rich dividends in the years to come. Sure. Thank you. Next question is from Jaineel Parekh. "Thanks for touching upon AI. Can you please elaborate more on the AR/VR space, example, Sandbox versus VR technology? We've been looking at the VR space for a decade. We actually even contemplated starting a VR studio way back in 2011, 2012. Thankfully, we did not. Otherwise, we would have burned a lot of money. That said, I think the technology has really progressed well. And we are much closer to a takeoff there than we were ever. And it's probably sooner than later. Maybe two years out, three years out is difficult to really put a specific month on it. But the way the devices, the experience of these devices, whether you look at the Quest 2 or even the Apple Vision Pro, etc., the experience has really become good, even from a gaming perspective. With the devices getting more condensed and the pricing coming down, I think mass market adoption will happen. From a Nazara perspective, today, we are actively looking at acquiring maybe one or two VR studios, not very large, but studios that have core competencies there so that we can enter that space and then ride the wave as it comes. Sure. Thank you. Next question is from Vishal Soni. "What's your take on the future of esports tournament platforms, and how do you see Nazara fitting into it? You want to take that, Sudhir, or I'll answer? Feel free, Nitish. So I think esports in India, in our view, is a mega trend, which will actually a lot of innovation in global esports. I think is going to happen out of India because it's a mobile-first gaming country with a very large youth population. And we're already seeing a lot of innovation actually emerge out of India, which is being taken up globally. So I think esports will continue to grow very fast. Esports today is having offline tournaments, which NODWIN Gaming is very active in, and also online tournaments. So I think both segments will continue to grow. And as you know, with NODWIN, we are already the market leaders in that space. We've grown quite large. We've expanded our ecosystem in the esports world a lot. So I think Nazara is very well positioned on the bet we took a few years back in this segment. Sure. Next question from Sanjay Ladda. "What is our acquisition strategy? When you see that synergy really play out once you buy the company, what is the desirable margin or sustainable margin we would like to operate in? For our core gaming business, which is the game studios we run, today Kiddopia, Animal Jam, Fusebox in recent times, I think any healthy gaming business, core gaming business, which owns the IP, should be doing at least a 30%-25%-30% EBITDA margin. I think most of the businesses today, Sudhir, correct me, it's around 20%-22%. Yeah. Currently blended about 20-ish, but yeah. Yeah. So I think we do have opportunity to further scale these margins as we scale and go along. In some of our businesses, like the esports business in NODWIN, because these are growth businesses, our focus is on growing the ecosystem and growing the business. So the margins will be low today, but we will hopefully catch up on margins in a couple of years' time. You start seeing upticks on that. Lastly, you will see that we avoid. We We don't like a burn, and we don't like losses. So most of our businesses, you will see that we are avoiding usually at least getting into a large burn mode. Fair enough. His follow-up question is, "The promoter shareholding is on a decline mode. Any reason apart from capital raised by them, do we see management shareholding to increase? I think a lot of the sort of two answers there. One is originally in 2005, when WestBridge Capital invested capital in the company. This company started in 2000, and the first capital infusion was in 2005. The company had been through five years of significant turbulence post the dot-com crash. So we diluted significantly at that point of time. For $1.5 million, we diluted 40% plus ESOP, almost 50%, 55%. So a lot of the structure of the cap table that you see is an impact of early dilution between 2005 and 2007 rather than later dilution. The reality is this: the company got actually built, it's a bit of a paradox because the company actually got built on very low capital. Like I was mentioning, 2005 to 2007, we only raised INR 12 crores. The next fundraise only happened, I think, in 2020, just before our IPO, when Hornbill Capital put in INR 100 crores. So between 2000 and 2020, till we reached the IPO point, the company had actually raised only INR 12 crores. So it had been run in a very highly capital-efficient manner. It's just that because of circumstances, we diluted early. But it's never impacted the promoters, which is me or my family, because we've been chasing a dream that was incepted in 1999 about where gaming is going to go in India and how we can play a larger part of it. In recent years, because of the increased M&A activity, obviously, we've used our unlisted stock as well as our listed stock to either raise capital or swap the equity to do some of this M&A. But we believe, and at least our intent always is to ensure that the value that we hope to create through such activity will be much higher than the cost of dilution that is being incurred. But obviously, collateral damages for the promoter shareholding. And in May of this year, we did sell, the promoter family did sell a 6% stake. And that was primarily because we hadn't really taken any meaningful liquidity for 25 years. And that was the only reason that that stake sale was done. But we remained fully committed to this business. Okay. Next question is from Vishal Soni. "Do you think Nazara could develop an in-house game in the future that matches the popularity of BGMI or Free Fire? Yes, our intent will be very much to do it, either ourselves or through developer partners that we may invest in. I think AA, AAA titles coming out of India should happen, will happen, and AI will actually make it easier because, like I was saying earlier, some of the gaps in knowledge can be filled faster using AI. Also, the costs of making attempts for AA, AAA titles will drastically come down as AI progresses over the next year, so it's something we will attempt. We have not yet started down that path, but maybe in another year's time, we may take on such an initiative. No, I'll just chip in for a bit there. There's a game called FAU-G, which some of you might be familiar with. The initial version was launched just after India and China had the Galwan skirmish. And that game didn't work that well. But there's a new version of FAU-G called FAU-G: Domination coming out probably by January. It's very close now. And that's a game that Nazara is publishing. It's not developed by Nazara, but we work quite closely with the developers there to make sure it works well and to launch it. And. Sorry, Sudhir. You're on mute. We just lost you. I'm sorry. I was just saying, so we're quite hopeful that that game, FAU-G: Domination, might become India's first big homegrown title. I mean, it is the kind of game that BGMI is. They're not necessarily saying it'll do as well as that, but that is the ambition. So let's see. Okay. Thank you. Next question, a follow-up from Pradyumna is, "You have mentioned a target of INR 300 crores EBITDA by FY 2027. How will you achieve this target? We will achieve this target by obviously focusing on one, scaling up our revenues through the various initiatives we have, as well as improving our margin profile, and at this point of time, I feel very confident that we are well on track to achieve the target. Okay. Next question is from Bansi. "Can you throw some light on PokerBaazi revenue, EBITDA post GST change regime? Also, can you share at what kind of EBITDA did we acquire PokerBaazi? The detailed KPIs we will share in the next quarter's presentation. In terms of the GST cost, obviously, generally for the industry, the GST costs have increased by a multiple of four, right? They're four X from whatever they were paying, which means eroded the profitabilities of almost all RMG businesses. But I think the PokerBaazi team has done extremely well to bring back this business to profitability and growth as well. So I think we're quite excited with how their KPIs look. In terms of the multiples, I think EBITDA to EBITDA would probably not be the right multiple to look at it at this point of time. But our net revenue to the value we paid is probably about three, three and a half times in that region. Okay. Follow-up from Haresh, "Can you share the segment-wise path to INR 300 crores EBITDA by FY 2027? We'll put it out in the next presentation. Next question from Kimberly is, "Can you please throw some light on the integration with ONDC, and what is the opportunity for us in this? Yeah. I think this is a very interesting project because what are we trying to do here is that gaming in India, 500 million people are playing, 500 consumers are playing games. But the big challenge is monetization is still being low. India today ranks number one in global download charts, but not even in top 10 on monetization charts. So your propensity to buy in-app purchase is small, still growing and will grow, but still small. The revenues from advertising, when you're running programmatic advertising, is fairly poor. The fill rates are poor. But India is already a shopping nation, right? E-commerce is big, food delivery is big, etc. So I think what we are trying to really do is, how can we match these 500 million consumers who are spending so much time playing games? And also, games is a very interactive medium, right? People are constantly hooked. Their attention is focused on the game when they're playing. How can we show them relevant products and services that they can purchase while doing the gaming? I think that can help improve the yield to the developer, which can overall boost the industry, and I think that's what we are trying to experiment with ONDC because ONDC already has a whole tech stack in place, the supplier base in place. We are kind of integrating that into our own in-game shopping platform, but it's early days. I would say we are at an experimental phase now. In the next couple of quarters, we will try and get this to a place where we believe if we see success, then it can be kind of extrapolated on a much larger scale. Sure. Next question from Vishal Soni is, "How does Nazara view the future of Stan and Lysto, especially with the recent investment in Stan and the new collaboration with Lysto in the Web3 space? Look, for us to stay relevant, we are always looking at new technology, and we're always also excited about it. At the same time, I believe that making the moves too early is not very useful, but at the right time can be very positive. So Web3 technology is something we've been looking at for many, many years, and we took a serious look at it in 2020, 2021, and decided to wait. At this point of time, we are starting to again explore the space because we do think that things like smart NFTs, which are digital asset ownership that you can have within games, can be big game changers for the gaming industry going forward. And we can't stay out of it. Both Stan and Lysto are doing some interesting stuff in the Web3 space. They have traction, proven KPIs, user bases. Especially Stan, we are very impressed with what traction they are getting, and therefore, the idea of acquiring stakes in these companies or doing collaborations was to work more closely with them and grow together, both our knowledge as well as our business. Got it. Thank you. Next question is from Kaustubh Doshi. "Could you provide an update on the anticipated timeline and strategic plans for the integration of Smaaash Entertainment into Nazara pending the necessary regulatory approvals? So, specific for Smaaash, we were the successful bidders after a process that's taken two, three years. So it's been quite time-consuming. We're in the final stages of that process, I believe, at NCLT. They still have an approval process, which may take two months, three months, six months. I don't know exact timelines. But we're hopeful that we will get control of that business in the near future, post which we can look at scaling it up. I think generally we are taking a view that offline entertainment is going to be very large in India. The same going-out strategy that Zomato has been talking about, we also concur with that consumers are going to want to go out, spend money on interactive entertainment, social experiences. And we also believe we will see some synergies with what we do online, and we can drive hybrid solutions. So for us, our approach in offline is going to be a multi-IP, multi-format approach, of which Smaash is one move into it. We recently announced an investment and acquisition of Funky Monkeys, which is another move. And there may be a third or a fourth idea also. So that's how we are kind of approaching that space. Similar to that question and going in that trend, Chirag asks, "Is there any thoughts of offline-based Poker events, or is it too early to start? It's an interesting question. In my discussions with PokerBaazi team, it has definitely come up. And I heard recently that UPI, perhaps UPI, I'm not sure if I'm right. Has Sudhir, is that right? UP, Agra is. They have allowed, permitted it. So I'm sure depending on the opportunity, they are very well placed to take advantage of any such opportunities that may come up. In terms of the esports margins, I think esports, the way we present it today, is a combination of NODWIN Gaming and Sportskeeda. As you know, NODWIN Gaming today operates at almost break-even margins, whereas Sportskeeda operates at a, Sudhir, is it 30%? Thirty percent to 40%, depending on the quarter. Yeah, but let's say 30%. So today we are presenting a blended margin, which may be about 10%, 12%, or 15%. I think if the NODWIN Gaming margins, once they start ticking up, that will really see a large uptick in our overall esports margins. I think we're about a year away from starting to see a meaningful uptick. Fair enough. I think his final question is, "How many offline or online events do we do on an annual basis? I don't have a real count because it's been really increasing at a fairly fast velocity. On approximate basis, Sudhir, do we have a number? How many kind of events does NODWIN do? Over 100, but. And that's across the world, right? So it's a large number. Fair enough. I think those were all the questions and right on time. Thank you. Thank you, Nitish and Sudhir. This was a very educational and good overview. I think we've covered a lot of questions in a very short span and very interesting ones on Nazara. So thank you so much for giving us the time. Any closing comments from your side, Nitish? No, I think I'd just like to reiterate that India really has a fantastic opportunity to become a global leader in gaming. Our Prime Minister spoke about it in the recent Independence Day speech as well, and Nazara is doing all it can do to make it happen. Great. Thank you. I'll just add a small one as well, which is, look, the way to think about gaming is also gaming in the context of entertainment, right, overall. If you look at it globally, gaming is one of the largest segments within the entertainment market, larger than movies or larger than music, etc., in most parts of the world. In India, gaming is still much smaller than some of those other segments. But that switch is beginning to happen. If you see the younger generation, and by that I mean maybe kids and teenagers to maybe early 20s, already their consumption patterns have changed, where they may even be watching games much more than, say, watching serials on TV or movies or news. And as that generation kind of keeps growing up, we do believe gaming will just become larger and larger. That's the long-term direction we're taking, which we need to be aware of. Great. Great to hear. Thank you so much, Sudhir. Thank you so much, Nitish. Thank you for your time, and thank you, participants, for joining us. Have a great one. Bye. Thanks, Nitish. Thanks, everyone.