Nazara Technologies closed the year to March 2026 with its highest-ever revenue, ₹1,828.98 crore (about $190 million), and in the same set of accounts wrote off ₹914.7 crore on a single investment after the government banned the business that investment depended on. Both numbers are real, both are audited, and neither cancels the other out — which is the whole story of how a 27-year-old Mumbai gaming company keeps surviving industries that keep dying under it.
The company that lists on the NSE and BSE as “India’s gaming stock” has already buried two business models: an online portal that drowned in the dot-com bust, and a telecom-operator content business that regulation and falling data prices made obsolete. Its answer to the near-death of a third — real money gaming, banned outright by Parliament in 2025 — was structural rather than heroic: it had never fully owned that business in the first place. That single decision, to hold its riskiest bet as a minority stake rather than a subsidiary, is why the ban shows up on Nazara’s balance sheet as a write-down and not as a hole in its revenue line.
Quick facts
| Company | Nazara Technologies Limited |
| Founded | 1999, Mumbai |
| Founder | Nitish Mittersain |
| Businesses | Mobile and casual gaming (Kiddopia, World Cricket Championship, licensed titles), AdTech (Datawrkz), sports media (Sportskeeda); a minority stake in esports (NODWIN Gaming) since August 2025 |
| FY26 revenue | ₹1,828.98 crore (year ended 31 March 2026) |
| FY26 profit | ₹81.94 crore, consolidated profit after tax |
| Listed | 30 March 2021, NSE and BSE |
| Market value | ≈ ₹14,200 crore as of 18 September 2026 |
| Key shareholders / CEO | Nitish Mittersain (founder-CEO, promoter group holds 33.98%); the Jhunjhunwala family, an early backer; Nikhil Kamath, a reported recent buyer |
What Nazara does
Nazara Technologies is not one gaming company; it is a holding company for several. Through its own studios and part- or wholly-owned subsidiaries it sells mobile games and gamified learning apps directly to consumers (the best known is Kiddopia, a subscription early-learning app aimed largely at parents in the United States), runs a programmatic advertising business that buys and places ad inventory for other apps and publishers (Datawrkz), and, until August 2025, consolidated one of India’s largest esports and gaming-events companies, NODWIN Gaming, which runs tournaments, licenses IPs such as ESL, and organises Comic Con India. It also owns Sportskeeda, a sports content and fantasy-adjacent media site, outright. What ties the portfolio together is Nitish Mittersain’s stated approach: buy a majority stake in a working business, keep its founders in charge, and let Nazara’s balance sheet and distribution fund its next phase, rather than build every product in-house.
The origin
Nitish Mittersain started what became Nazara in 1999 in Mumbai, as an online gaming portal, a year before the dot-com crash, according to the company’s own history as recorded on Wikipedia. He was in his early twenties, closer to a coder building a hobby business than a trained executive, a framing repeated in Exchange4media’s profile of him as “the coder who built India’s gaming empire.” The founding insight was simple and, for 1999 India, ahead of its infrastructure: that people would eventually pay, in small amounts, to be entertained on devices they already owned. The internet of 1999 could not support that idea. The insight survived; the first business built on it did not.
The struggle years
The first near-death came almost immediately. Nazara’s original online portal model collapsed with the dot-com bust of 2000, and by YourStory’s account of Mittersain’s own retelling, the 21-year-old founder was carrying debt of around ₹3 crore, a sum the outlet estimated would be equivalent to ₹20-30 crore in today’s money, with revenues that had simply dried up. Those years, 2000 to 2002, forced the first pivot: away from an open internet portal and into mobile entertainment value-added services (VAS) sold through telecom operators, delivering WAP content such as comic strips and mobile games on a revenue-share basis, per Wikipedia’s timeline of the company.
That telecom-VAS model gave Nazara a decade of growth, helped by a marquee 2004-05 tie-up with Sachin Tendulkar to distribute personalised cricket content on revenue share, a deal YourStory credits with unlocking distribution across telecom operators and putting Nazara in the national press. But the model carried the seeds of its own second death. As 3G and 4G rolled out, data got cheaper, and Indians increasingly reached the same content through free app stores rather than paid telecom downloads, the entire pay-per-download VAS business that Nazara had rebuilt itself around after 2002 stopped making sense. The company’s own retrospectives, recounted in trade coverage of its 25-year history, describe management concluding that the VAS collapse was not a dip to manage through but a business to leave — forcing a second full pivot, this time to Android app-store gaming, around 2011.
The turning point
The turning point was not a single game hit; it was the day Nazara stopped being a private survivor of two dead business models and became a public company with an oversubscribed IPO backing its third act. On 30 March 2021, Nazara listed on the NSE and BSE at an issue price of ₹1,101 a share, entirely through an offer for sale (no fresh money went to the company itself), according to IPO-tracking site Chittorgarh, which recorded the issue at ₹582.69 crore in size. The stock opened trading more than 80% above that issue price, according to Wikipedia’s account of the listing. On one side of that day sat a company that, before the issue, had never raised primary capital from public markets and was still best known in India for a cricket game on feature phones. On the other side sat “India’s first listed gaming company” — the label most Indian financial press has used for Nazara ever since — with a public shareholder base, listed-market discipline on its acquisitions, and, crucially, currency (its own listed stock) it could use to keep buying gaming, esports and adtech businesses at a pace a private company could not have sustained.
The money behind it
Nazara’s capital story runs through three named backers. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, the investor popularly known as India’s “Big Bull,” first put money into Nazara in 2017, years before the IPO, according to a detailed timeline of the company’s acquisitions and raises published by finance newsletter writer Rajan Singh. By the time of the March 2021 listing his holding was large enough that it was widely covered as an anchor to the offering; after his death in August 2022 the position passed to his family, and Nazara continued to appear in reporting on the portfolio of his widow, Rekha Jhunjhunwala, as recently as 2025, per Business Standard. Second, the founder and promoter group around Nitish Mittersain has kept a meaningful stake through every fundraise; Screener.in’s shareholding data puts the promoter group at 33.98% as of the shareholding pattern for the quarter ending around August 2026, down from 35.45% a year earlier. Third, Nikhil Kamath, the Zerodha co-founder and prolific startup investor, was reported to be among the buyers in a block deal covering roughly 4.9% of Nazara’s equity on 15 May 2026, a transaction that Storyboard18 reported sent the stock up 18% that week, though Nazara did not confirm Kamath’s identity as buyer in that report.
Beyond the IPO’s ₹582.69 crore offer-for-sale, Nazara has raised further primary capital directly: about ₹495 crore in February 2025, per Rajan Singh’s timeline, and more than $50 million during FY26 to help fund a 50% stake in Spain-based Bluetile Games as part of a pivot toward international, non-mobile gaming, according to Outlook Business’s Respawn vertical. As of 18 September 2026, Nazara’s market capitalisation stood at ₹14,176 crore per Screener.in and ₹14,208.75 crore per Tickertape — both pointing to a company worth roughly ₹14,200 crore, a figure built almost entirely through operating growth and acquisitions rather than serial primary fundraising, since the IPO itself handed the company no fresh cash.
How it makes money
Strip away the acquisitions and Nazara earns money three distinct ways. In gaming, revenue is mostly in-app purchases and subscriptions: Kiddopia charges parents a recurring subscription for gamified early-learning content, while free-to-play titles such as World Cricket Championship monetise a mix of ads and in-game purchases. In adtech, Datawrkz runs a programmatic advertising business, effectively taking a spread or fee for buying and placing ad inventory on behalf of publishers and advertisers — a lower-margin, higher-volume business than owned gaming IP. In esports, until deconsolidation, NODWIN earned from ticketing, sponsorship and media rights around tournaments and events such as Comic Con India, a business with high revenue growth but management has openly said it struggled on margin.
The part most casual observers get wrong is where real money gaming sits in this picture. Nazara held a stake of roughly 46-47% in Moonshine Technologies, the parent of poker platform PokerBaazi, and other real-money brands under OpenPlay, Baazi Networks and SBN Gaming Network. Because that stake was an associate holding rather than a controlling one, Moonshine’s revenue was never consolidated into Nazara’s topline. When the government’s Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 forced real-money platforms including Moonshine to shut down, Nazara said in a stock exchange filing that it had “no direct exposure” to real-money gaming and that these platforms did not contribute to its reported revenues — a claim its own accounting structure, not just its press statement, backs up. What the ban did hit was the balance sheet: Nazara wrote down the carrying value of its Moonshine investment by ₹914.7 crore in the September 2025 quarter, cutting the investment’s book value to ₹96.53 crore, according to Storyboard18’s reporting on the exchange filing. Management described it as a non-cash, non-recurring accounting adjustment rather than a cash loss.
The numbers
Revenue nearly tripled between FY22 and FY26, though profit growth has been far less linear, dipping in the year the company scaled up its riskiest bets before recovering.
| Year (₹ crore) | Revenue | EBITDA | Profit after tax |
| FY23 (year ended Mar 2023) | 1,091 | 109.7 | 61.4 |
| FY24 (year ended Mar 2024) | 1,138 | n/a (14.5% margin) | 75 |
| FY25 (year ended Mar 2025) | 1,624 (as originally reported) | 153.5 | 62.5 (continuing operations) |
| FY26 (year ended Mar 2026) | 1,828.98 | ~255 | 81.94 |
Two figures need a footnote rather than a clean line. First, FY25 revenue is reported two ways: ₹1,624 crore as originally announced in May 2025 by the company (per BestMediaInfo’s coverage of the results), and ₹1,254.30 crore as restated on a like-for-like basis in the FY26 annual results (per financial-news aggregator Whalesbook), after NODWIN Gaming was deconsolidated in August 2025 and its historical numbers stripped out for comparison. Both are legitimate; they simply answer different questions — “what did Nazara report at the time” versus “what would FY25 have looked like on today’s group structure.” Second, the FY26 profit line includes both the ₹914.7 crore Moonshine impairment, taken in the September 2025 quarter, and the effects of deconsolidating NODWIN in the same quarter; despite that impairment, Nazara’s reported net loss for that specific quarter was a comparatively contained ₹34 crore on revenue of ₹526 crore, according to a quarterly summary published by financial research site Arthneeti — a gap between the size of the write-off and the quarter’s actual bottom line that reflects how equity-accounted associate losses and one-off portfolio changes run through consolidated numbers, rather than any single disclosed offsetting gain.
Where the money comes from
By FY26, on Outlook Business Respawn’s reporting of the segment split, gaming contributed about ₹1,070 crore of revenue, adtech about ₹450 crore, and esports about ₹300 crore — a mix that inverts what most coverage of Nazara implies. Esports, the segment that generates the most media attention through live tournaments, celebrity casters and Comic Con India, is now both the smallest reported segment and one Nazara no longer controls: its stake in NODWIN fell to 47.66% in August 2025, deconsolidating the business from Nazara’s group accounts even though Nazara remains its largest shareholder, per Storyboard18. AdTech, a business with none of gaming’s public profile, actually grew fastest — Datawrkz-led adtech revenue rose 32% year-on-year to about ₹454 crore in FY26, per Storyboard18’s reporting on Nazara’s own strategic review — even as founder Nitish Mittersain has said publicly that Nazara plans to divest or de-emphasise both adtech and esports because neither has delivered the high-margin, cash-generative profile the company wants, redirecting focus instead to mobile, PC and console gaming, including its 2026 move into international studios via the Bluetile Games stake, per Entrackr’s report on his comments.
The risks
The most immediate risk is regulatory spillover from the very ban Nazara says does not touch its revenue. Separate from the Moonshine write-off, Nazara’s real-money subsidiaries OpenPlay and Halaplay were reported, as of Nazara’s Q1 FY26 disclosures covering the quarter to June 2025, to face Goods and Services Tax demand notices of about ₹1,120 crore, part of an industry-wide retrospective GST dispute worth more than ₹1.5 lakh crore that was, at that point, awaiting a Supreme Court ruling in the Gameskraft case, according to Gaming Amigos’s coverage of the quarter. A ruling against the industry could crystallise a large one-time liability even for a business the company says no longer generates revenue.
A second, quieter risk is platform and traffic dependence outside gaming itself. Sportskeeda, Nazara’s sports-media property, was hit by a Google search algorithm update that dented its traffic, with recovery only expected by the fourth quarter of FY26, per Arthneeti’s summary of Nazara’s Q2 FY26 commentary — a reminder that a media business built on search discovery answers to a platform Nazara does not control.
A third risk is self-declared: margin durability across a portfolio built by acquisition. Management has said openly that its esports and adtech units have struggled to deliver the margin profile it wants, prompting the planned exit from both, per Entrackr’s reporting — an admission that a meaningful share of the group’s reported revenue growth over the past several years came from businesses the company itself now considers structurally sub-scale on profitability, even as it takes on new integration risk buying overseas studios such as Bluetile Games and, earlier, UK-based Fusebox Games.
The takeaway
Nazara’s most transferable lesson is not about gaming; it is about how a company should hold its riskiest bets. Every near-death in Nazara’s history came from a business model, not a bad product: an internet portal that outran 1999’s infrastructure, a telecom-VAS model that outlived the pricing regime that funded it, and now a real-money gaming category that outran India’s regulatory tolerance. In the first two cases Nazara owned the failing business outright and had to rebuild from the wreckage. In the third, it had structured its exposure as a minority, equity-accounted stake rather than a subsidiary — a decision made years before anyone could have known Parliament would ban the category outright in 2025. When the ban came, Nazara took a real and painful ₹914.7 crore hit to its investment value, but its consolidated revenue line, the number that decides whether a public company keeps its market’s confidence, did not move because of it. Betting on an industry’s future is unavoidable for an acquisitive holding company; deciding how much of the company’s own capital structure that bet is allowed to touch is a choice, and it is the choice that determined whether this particular near-death showed up as a crisis or as a footnote.
Frequently asked questions
What does Nazara Technologies actually make its money from?
Mostly mobile gaming subscriptions and in-app purchases (led by the Kiddopia early-learning app and cricket title World Cricket Championship) and programmatic advertising through its adtech subsidiary Datawrkz; esports events under NODWIN Gaming contributed revenue until Nazara’s stake fell below majority control in August 2025.
Is Nazara Technologies a real money gaming or betting company?
No, not on a consolidated basis. Nazara held a roughly 46-47% associate stake in Moonshine Technologies, parent of poker platform PokerBaazi, but because that stake was never a controlling one, Moonshine’s revenue was not included in Nazara’s reported financials, a distinction the company stated explicitly in a stock exchange filing after the 2025 ban.
How did the 2025 online gaming ban affect Nazara?
Nazara took a ₹914.7 crore non-cash impairment on its Moonshine investment in the September 2025 quarter after the Promotion and Regulation of Online Gaming Act, 2025 forced real-money platforms to stop operating, cutting the investment’s book value to ₹96.53 crore, per Storyboard18’s reporting on the company’s exchange filing. Its own operating revenue, which did not include Moonshine’s, was not directly affected by the ban itself, though separate GST demands on its former real-money units remain a live risk.
Who owns Nazara Technologies?
Founder Nitish Mittersain and the promoter group held 33.98% as of Screener.in’s shareholding data for the period around August 2026. The Jhunjhunwala family, an early backer since 2017, has remained a long-standing shareholder, and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath was reported to have bought roughly 4.9% of the company in a May 2026 block deal, per Storyboard18.
Is Nazara Technologies profitable, and what is it worth today?
Yes. Nazara reported a consolidated profit after tax of ₹81.94 crore for the year ended March 2026 on revenue of ₹1,828.98 crore. As of 18 September 2026 its market capitalisation was about ₹14,200 crore, per Screener.in (₹14,176 crore) and Tickertape (₹14,208.75 crore).
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Wikipedia, “Nazara Technologies” entry, accessed September 2026
- BestMediaInfo, “Nazara posts record EBITDA of Rs 153.5 crore in FY25 on Rs 1,624 crore revenue,” May 2025
- Entrackr, “Nazara posts flat scale in FY24; profit grows 23%,” May 2024
- Inc42, “Nazara Tech Crosses INR 1,000 Cr Revenue Mark In FY23, Profit Up 21% YoY,” 2023
- Whalesbook, “Nazara FY26 Revenue ₹1829 Cr, Profit ₹82 Cr; ₹915 Cr Loss Hits Bottom Line,” May 2026
- Storyboard18, “Nazara takes ₹914.7 crore hit after Moonshine write-off following Online Money Gaming ban,” November 2025
- Storyboard18, “Nazara-terminates ₹15.9 crore PokerBaazi stake purchase after online money gaming ban,” 2025
- Storyboard18, “Nazara Technologies may sell adtech, esports units as it bets on core gaming,” 2026
- Storyboard18, “Nikhil Kamath likely ups stake in Nazara as gaming stock jumps 18%,” May 2026
- Entrackr, “Nazara CEO Nitish Mittersain signals exit from esports and adtech verticals,” 2026
- Outlook Business Respawn, “Nazara FY26 Earnings: 13% Revenue Growth Amid Global Gaming Pivot,” May 2026
- Gaming Amigos, “Nazara Technologies Doubles Revenue in Q1 FY26, But Faces Supreme Court Uncertainty,” August 2025
- Arthneeti, “Nazara Technologies Ltd Q2 FY26 Earnings,” 2025/2026
- Torus Digital, “Nazara Technologies Q1 Results 2026,” August 2025
- Chittorgarh, “Nazara Technologies IPO Date, Price, GMP, Review, Details,” accessed September 2026
- YourStory, “Nitish Mittersain on building Nazara Technologies and its journey to becoming a Rs 5,000 Cr gaming company,” July 2021
- Exchange4media, “Celebrating Nitish Mittersain: The journey of the coder who built India’s gaming empire”
- Rajan Singh (Substack), “Nazara Technologies: gaming aggregator,” 2025/2026
- Screener.in, Nazara Technologies Ltd shareholding and market data, accessed 18 September 2026
- Tickertape, “NAZARA Share Price Today,” accessed 18 September 2026
- Business Standard, coverage of Rekha Jhunjhunwala’s portfolio including Nazara Technologies, 2025
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