Krafton, South Korea’s gaming large recognized for titles together with PUBG: Battlegrounds and Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), has acquired a controlling stake in 12-year-old Indian gaming studio Nautilus Mobile for $14 million in an all-cash deal.
On Friday, the South Korean gaming firm confirmed to TechCrunch that it has acquired a “north of 75% stake” in Nautilus, the gaming studio fashionable for its cricket enthusiast-focused Real Cricket franchise.
The Pune-based studio will proceed to function independently after the deal, which is anticipated to shut by the top of the month, with all its 45 staff remaining on Nautilus’s payroll, Krafton informed TechCrunch.
Founded in 2013, Nautilus has garnered tens of millions of downloads for its Real Cricket franchise, which at present has 5 titles, together with Real Cricket 24 and Real Cricket Premier League.
Krafton goals to strengthen Nautilus’s “core competence” in cell cricket video games — the place demand is excessive in cricket-loving India — by refining its current titles within the brief time period and exploring new genres in the long run, Sean Hyunil Sohn, CEO at Krafton India, mentioned in an interview.
“Our development capability in Nautilus will help Krafton double down on its India gaming strategy, and together, we can probably build more games, more genres, both for the Indian market and global market going forward,” Nautilus CEO Anuj Mankar informed TechCrunch.
The firm plans to increase Nautilus’ presence to different geographies over time.
India’s cell gaming market is rising steadily, pushed by a big base of younger smartphone customers. Mobile video games dominate the nation’s total gaming trade by spending, accounting for 77.9% of complete income, per market intelligence agency Niko Partners. The agency additionally estimates that the nation’s cell gaming income will develop from $640 million in 2023 to $1.1 billion by 2028.
Krafton, which noticed 119.3% year-over-year development in its web revenue final 12 months to roughly $889 million (KRW 1.Three trillion), sees India as a promising and key market to proceed its success. However, many of the development from India has up to now come from its flagship title for the native viewers, Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), which hit its highest-ever gross sales final 12 months and surpassed 200 million downloads.
The firm has different titles, together with Bullet Echo India, Road To Valor, and CookieRun. However, they haven’t but helped repeat the success story of the battle royale recreation, a localized model of PUBG.
The deal might assist Krafton transfer past BGMI and discover new avenues of success, together with cricket and different sports activities video games, to draw new players.
In 2020, Indian digital leisure and know-how firm JetSynthesys acquired a 100% stake in Nautilus Mobile. That was adopted by Krafton’s strategic funding of $5.four million in 2022.
Sohn informed TechCrunch that whereas Nautilus’ potential was the rationale for the preliminary funding, Krafton discovered its position as a minority stakeholder limiting when it comes to supporting the studio’s content material growth. Gaining a controlling stake, he mentioned, would enable for deeper collaboration and larger involvement in core growth efforts with Nautilus.
“We strongly believe that cricket games have a lot of potential. And we want to work with Nautilus to make the best effort possible to really realize the potential of this market, not just in India, but in other cricket-playing nations and other countries, which are becoming more active in cricket,” mentioned Nihansh Bhat, company lead growth at Krafton India, informed TechCrunch.
JetSynthesys will stay a “significant minority” investor in Nautilus Mobile and can proceed to work with the studio on areas, together with eSports. The firm has already labored with the studio to assist companion its Real Cricket…
