InMobi’s consumer internet arm Glance said on Friday that it has acquired a gaming company Gambit Sports which will accelerate its ambition of building the biggest platform for NFT-based live gaming experiences for Gen-Z, across different markets. Gambit Sports Private Limited was founded in 2015 by Yashashvi Takallapalli, Gaurav Konar, Ranaveer Sankieneni and Deepak Venkatramani, Gambit owns and operates gaming platform Nostragamus (Nostra Pro). Gambit claims that over 100 million games have been played on the Nostragamus platform, and it has close to 10 million registered users.
Last month, Jio Platforms announced an investment $200 million in Glance at about $1.7 billion, as per reports. Glance is also backed by Google. Glance ships pre-installed on several popular smartphone models and has amassed “presence” on 400 million users.
The acquisition will bring together Glance’s scale and lock-screen centric innovation with Gambit’s expertise in the gaming market. Glance Games – Glance’s lock screen gaming platform – has over 45 million monthly active users across Asia, said the company in a statement. “Gaming is the most exciting content category across the world today and Gen-Z spends more time on gaming than on any other activity online,” said Piyush Shah, Co-founder of InMobi Group and President and COO, Glance.
Glance, earlier acquired smaller firms Roposo and Shop101 in recent times and is known to significantly scale their offerings while integrating with Glance offerings. “Almost 10 million people are watching live game streaming on Glance every month. So our idea was, how do we also bring live game shows on the platform?” said Shah.
Shah said NFTs will deliver myriad benefits to users. “It will have utilitarian benefits — where owning the digital virtual assets will allow users to build strong character in games — and at the same time these NFTs could be listed and traded on NFT marketplaces and exchanges to help users earn and own,” he was quoted by Tech Crunch.
Gambit plans to partner with gamers and influencers as well as other gaming firms, he said. The NFTs on the platform will capture micro-moments from the game and high-order virtual avatars, he added. “This will potentially enable creators, streamers and developers to monetize through assets and NFT-based game creation, while giving gamers unique experiences that they love,” the startup said.
“With Glance and Gambit’s combined strengths and our belief that there is a game for every person, we envision doubling the number of monthly active gamers on Glance Games in the next year,” Yashashvi Takallapalli, co-founder and chief executive of Gambit, said in a statement.
Gambit will also enable Glance to launch multiple casual-to-midcore games that can be enjoyed by diverse sets of gamers. In the coming quarters, Glance plans to launch NFTs in live gaming. This will potentially enable creators, streamers and developers to monetize through assets and NFT-based game creation, while giving gamers unique experiences. “We have already started seeing great traction for live gaming on Glance. For instance, over 10 million users watch live game streams on Glance every week now,” said Yashashvi Takallapalli, Co-founder and CEO, Gambit. “With Glance and Gambit’s combined strengths and our belief that there is a game for every person, we envision doubling the number of monthly active gamers on Glance Games in the next year.”