Krafton, South Korea’s gaming big 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 common for its cricket enthusiast-focused Real Cricket franchise.
The Pune-based studio will proceed to function independently after the deal, which is predicted to shut by the top of the month, with all its 45 workers remaining on Nautilus’s payroll, Krafton instructed TechCrunch.
Founded in 2013, Nautilus has garnered hundreds of thousands of downloads for its Real Cricket franchise, which at the moment 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, stated in an interview.
“Our growth functionality in Nautilus will assist Krafton double down on its India gaming technique, and collectively, we will in all probability construct extra video games, extra genres, each for the Indian market and international market going ahead,” Nautilus CEO Anuj Mankar instructed 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 general gaming business 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 progress in its web revenue final yr to roughly $889 million (KRW 1.3 trillion), sees India as a promising and key market to proceed its success. However, many of the progress from India has to this point come from its flagship title for the native viewers, Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI), which hit its highest-ever gross sales final yr 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 sport, a localized model of PUBG.
The deal may assist Krafton transfer past BGMI and discover new avenues of success, together with cricket and different sports activities video games, to draw new avid gamers.
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 $5.4 million in 2022.
Sohn instructed 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 stated, would permit for deeper collaboration and higher involvement in core growth efforts with Nautilus.
“We strongly consider that cricket video games have a variety of potential. And we need to work with Nautilus to make the very best effort attainable to actually understand the potential of this market, not simply in India, however in different cricket-playing nations and different nations, which have gotten extra energetic in cricket,” stated Nihansh Bhat, company lead growth at Krafton India, instructed TechCrunch.
JetSynthesys will stay a “important 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 sport with cricket groups, together with these related to the Indian Premier League, the world’s most profitable cricket match in India.
“We will, over a protracted time period, need to take a look at, in fact, elevated income, elevated person base, improved retention, all the same old issues, and hopefully new offers as properly,” Bhat stated on the query of how Krafton would measure the deal’s success publish its completion.
Until now, Krafton has invested over $200 million in India, excluding the Nautilus Mobile.
Krafton’s 20% investments in India have been in gaming and gaming-adjacent firms, although the corporate additionally invested in Indian startups, together with the funds platform Cashfree, audio platform Kuku FM, and influencer advertising and marketing platform One Impression. It additionally backed funds, together with gaming-focused Lumikai and IMM Investment’s first India fund.
“We are wanting on the alternative for acquisitions, average investments, and even enterprise collaboration with notable gamers within the nation,” Sohn stated.
Nautilus will be part of the 14 different sport studios Krafton operates in markets world wide.
