Nazara Ropes In M&A Consultant Arun Gupta As Addl Director

SUMMARY

The listed gaming major also announced the appointment of Arun Bhandari as company secretary and compliance officer

Nazara has also signed a call option agreement with Pokerbaazi's parent Moonshine Technology to get a "call option" to purchase up to 1% stake for up to INR 25 Cr.

Nazara’s board also approved the extension of the second close long stop date for the acquisition of 22% stake in adtech company Datawrkz to January 31, 2025

Listed gaming major Nazara Technologies, which is on an acquisition spree, has appointed strategic mergers and acquisition (M&A) consultant Arun Gupta as an additional director on its board.

In an exchange filing, the company said that Gupta, who also serves as a non-executive director on fintech SaaS startup Zaggle’s board, has been appointed to its board for a period of five years.

Gupta has experience spanning three decades across investment banking, media, gaming, animation, education and IT industries. He was previously associated with startups such as Rebel Foods, Biryani By Kilo, Darwinbox, Clovia, Vedix, among others, as either a board member or an investor.

Besides rejigging its boardroom, the listed gaming major also announced the appointment of Arun Bhandari as company secretary and compliance officer. This comes as outgoing interim executive Krunal Wala’s term came to an end on December 17.

In addition, Nazara also took decisions on a couple of its acquisitions during its board meeting held on Tuesday (December 17). As per the filing, the gaming major has decided to extend the timeline for its biggest acquisition till date, Pokerbaazi, till December 31.

Nazara, which plans to acquire 47.02% shareholding in the real money gaming startup, also signed a call option agreement with Pokerbaazi’s parent Moonshine Technology to get a “call option” to purchase up to 1% of the latter’s share capital, on a fully diluted basis, for an aggregate consideration not exceeding INR 25 Cr.

In its latest filing, Nazara said that it will acquire 18.69 Cr fully paid-up equity shares of Moonshine Technology by way of share swap and cash consideration. While the cash consideration will see Nazara cough up INR 624.22 Cr, the share swap will be worth INR 195.90 Cr.

This follows the listed company signing a definitive agreement to acquire a 47.7% stake in Moonshine Technology for INR 831.5 Cr. Its board had also approved an additional equity infusion of up to INR 150 Cr in Pokerbaazi, bringing the total size of the deal at the time to INR 982 Cr.

Meanwhile, Nazara’s board on Tuesday also approved the extension of the second close long stop date (proposed timeline for the completion of an M&A) for the acquisition of 22% stake in Bengaluru-based adtech company Datawrkz to January 31, 2025.

Now, the company will acquire 14,999 equity shares of Datawrkz by the end of January next year for INR 21 Cr and the payment will be made in one or more tranches.

Earlier in the day, the listed major also said that its subsidiary Paper Boat Apps inked an agreement with children-focussed media production company Moonbug Entertainment to expand offerings for its flagship app Kiddopia.

A day ago, Nazara announced the purchase of 1,000 equity shares of Nextwave Multimedia for INR 2.3 Cr, effectively increasing its stake in the developers of the mobile cricket game franchise World Cricket Championship to 74.88% from 71.88% previously.

Shares of Nazara ended Tuesday’s trading session almost flat at INR 1,033.20 on the BSE.