Last month, Nitish Mittersain, CEO of Nazara Technologies, shared in an interview that the company is working on a larger blueprint for the real money gaming (RMG) space. He has elaborated more on it, revealing that the company is looking to grab a huge pie of the skill-based RMG sector.
The company recently reported an 18% YoY increase in profits for Q4FY23. The total revenue increased to Rs 1091 crore for FY23. When it comes to RMG, it contributed 5% to it, standing at Rs 57 crore.
“We’ve not had a very large business in the real-money gaming sector. It is therefore an opportunity where we can now start investing and grow that business to a meaningful scale and the opportunity is there in the real-money gaming segment,” said Mittersain to Moneycontrol.
The CEO is also waiting to get more regulatory clarity on GST and the new online gaming rules released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in April. The ministry, as part of the rules, aims to regulate online gaming with the help of self-regulatory organizations (SROs). The online gaming industry echoes Mittersain’s views, stating that there is still not enough clarity on what is allowed and what is not.
“I think the only big bottleneck still left in real-money gaming is GST clarity,” added Mittersain. He added that he is hopeful the situation will be resolved soon.
Nazara currently operates Classic Rummy and Halaplay (online fantasy). The company is planning to scale up its current operations as well as introduce new games in the market. The company is using both local and international resources to develop new real money games.
“RMG is today dominated by fantasy sports, rummy and poker. We think a lot more innovation can happen in the kind of games offered to the users. We are just seeing what fresh things we can bring to the market so that there is a differentiator also, and we get better traction,” Mittersain added further.
Talking about Tamil Nadu’s ban on online rummy and other games, Mittersain said the company is expecting a slight decline in the RMG revenues as the state contributed around 20% in FY23. The ban has forced the online gaming companies to stop their operations in the state completely.
“Based on the MeitY guidelines, I think these ad-hoc state-level bans are not something that should be done”. In the meantime, he said that the company will still expand towards other states,” concluded Mittersain.