Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to Nazara Technologies' earnings conference call hosted by PL Capital. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes.
Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Jinesh Joshi from PL Capital. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. On behalf of PL Capital, I welcome you all to the 1QFY26 earnings call of Nazara Technologies. We have with us the management represented by Mr. Nitish Mittersain, CEO and JMD, Mrs. Anupriya Das, Head of Corporate Development at Nazara, Mr. Rohit Sharma, Executive Director at Nazara, Mr. Rakesh Shah, CFO of Nazara, Mr. Terry Li, CEO Fusebox Games, Mr. Akshat Rathee, Founder of NODWIN Gaming, Mr. Aniruddha Kumar, CSO Sportskeeda, Mr. Senthil Govindan, CEO Datawrkz, and Mr. Puneet Singh, Co-founder of Moonshine. I would now like to hand over the call to Mr. Nitish Mittersain for opening comments. Over to you, sir.
Sure, thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. In Q1 FY26, Nazara reported revenues of INR 498.8 crores. That was up 99% year-on-year, and an EBITDA of INR 47.4 crores, up 90% year-on-year. Our core gaming business delivered a healthy 24.4% EBITDA margin. PAT from continuing operations was INR 36.4 crores, and overall PAT stood at INR 51.3 crores, reflecting a 118% year-on-year increase.
These results underscore the strength of our IP-led gaming strategy, delivering strong top-line growth alongside disciplined cost management and a focus on growth with profitability. We are seeing the early benefits of a sharpened focus on owning and scaling high-quality gaming IPs, and our centers of excellence in user acquisition and analytics are taking shape and will enable us to acquire, retain, and monetize players more efficiently going forward.
We continue to build on these games with a steady pipeline of titles designed to drive growth across multiple genres and geographies in the coming quarters. During this quarter, we took a strategic step by proposing the deep consolidation of NODWIN Gaming. This will sharpen our focus on core gaming while enabling NODWIN to pursue its esports ambitions aggressively.
We also strengthened our leadership team with the appointment of Mr. Rohit Sharma as Executive Director. Rohit brings over 25 years of experience in gaming and digital media, and his expertise will be instrumental in advancing our IP growth strategy across genres, platforms, and markets. The board has approved two shareholder initiatives. Firstly, a subdivision of one equity share of face value INR 4 each into two equity shares of face value INR 2 each, and a bonus issue in the ratio of 1:1.
At Nazara, our vision is to build a globally relevant and highly respected durable gaming company from India, and we believe we are well on our way to achieve the same. With disciplined capital deployment, strong IP ownership, and operational excellence, we are confident in our ability to scale into a global gaming platform that can compete with the best. With that, I will now hand over to Anupriya to discuss segment-wise performance. Over to you, Anupriya.
Thank you, Nitish. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. In Q1 FY26, on a year-on-year basis, our gaming segment revenue grew by 160%, and our EBITDA grew by 311%, with an overall EBITDA margin of the gaming segment at 24.4%. Moving to Curve Games, Nazara acquired 100% equity of Curve Games for an equity value of INR 247 crores in an all-cash deal earlier this year.
Founded in 2005 and headquartered in London, Curve Games is an independent video game publisher focused on platforms such as PlayStation, Xbox, Steam, Nintendo Switch, and the PC. Curve Games posted revenue and EBITDA of INR 54.6 crores and INR 20.7 crores, respectively, in Q1 FY26. Curve Games is building further momentum with recent releases like Wobbly Life on Nintendo Switch and Human: Fall Flat, which are performing well across platforms.
FY26 is marked by operational discipline, which has freed up capital to invest in upcoming IP-led opportunities, including two invite-only Nintendo Switch 2 titles. Fusebox Games, the Fusebox revenues grew 49% year-on-year to INR 73 crores in Q1 FY26. EBITDA during the same period was INR 10.4 crores, reflecting a 14.3% EBITDA margin.
Fusebox has successfully expanded from a single game studio at the time of Nazara investment to a multi-game studio, having launched a new Big Brother game in May 2025 and two marquee IP-based games in the pipeline. In Q1 FY26, we ramped U.S. spend behind the global launches of the Big Brother game and Love Island Games, that is positioning us for sustained long-term growth, with late investments expecting to start returning from Q2 FY26 onwards.
Moving to Kiddopia, Kiddopia posted revenues of INR 45.4 crores and EBITDA of INR 8.5 crores, with EBITDA margin of 18.6% in Q1 FY26. In Q1 FY26, while investing in original content, Kiddopia ramped up its IP-led content, launching a Barbie Dreamhouse in April, Baby John Playroom, a Moonbug Little Angel IP in May, and PJ Masks activity in partnership with Hasbro in June a nd partnerships with Animaj for Pocoyo and Monk are also being launched.
Kiddopia ended this quarter with 227k subscribers as compared to roughly around 228k subscribers at the end of the last quarter, denoting stabilization attained through more disciplined UA and IP introduction. These strategic investments are expected to drive organic growth going forward. Moving to Animal Jam, revenue increased by 12.1% to INR 26.4 crores, while EBITDA also grew by a robust 55% to INR 5.9 crores on a year-on-year basis in Q1 FY26.
Animal Jam saw IAP momentum from strong player engagement, community events, and social contests supported by new launches across bundles, portions, and features. It also progressed on its Kaji-partnered casual mobile prototype, whose soft launch is targeted for FY26. Nazara completed the acquisition of Smaaash through NCLT process in early FY26, making this strategic expansion of its offline gaming footprint.
Smaaash delivered revenue of INR 8.1 crores and an EBITDA of INR 3.3 crores in the consolidation period starting from June 6th in this quarter. Nazara is closely collaborating with the management on revenue diversification, user experience upgrades, center resources, and shifts to a serious fully revamped Smaaash relaunch in FY27. Funky Monkeys, in Q1 FY26, their revenue expanded by 6.5% year-on-year to INR 4.9 crores, and EBITDA also grew to INR 2.3 crores during the same period.
Funky Monkeys closed Q1 with 12 operational centers across India, opening a new center at Surat in the mid-quarter. It continues to expand aggressively in the current year, and we are looking to add another eight to nine centers in this year. Moving to PokerBaazi, Moonshine Technology, PokerBaazi Parent, is accounted as an associate and not consolidated in our books. Moonshine reported the highest quarterly net revenue of INR 191.8 crores in Q1 FY26, with an EBITDA of - 73.9 crores.
This was an EBITDA loss due to front-loading marketing costs on account of IPL. PokerBaazi also delivered strong operating metrics in Q1, with gross gaming revenue (GGR) up 46% year-on-year, gross transactional value up 23%, and deposits up 19%. The IPL campaign drove record DAUs and MAUs and sustained user liquidity, while the May 25 PokerBaazi upgrade significantly boosted user engagement.
Moving to other segments, as Nitish mentioned, in July 2025, Nazara announced the strategic deconsolidation of NODWIN, subject to shareholder approval, reclassifying it as an associate to align with its sharpened focus on core gaming and IP partnerships.
Core gaming IP, the deconsolidation is subject to shareholder approval and will enable NODWIN to independently raise growth capital and operate with greater strategic and financial flexibility, while allowing Nazara to allocate capital to core gaming businesses. In Q1 FY26, NODWIN posted a strong revenue growth of 49%, with an EBITDA of INR -11 crores. Continued growth in esports, even based on popular IPs such as PUBG and Valorant, aided revenue growth for NODWIN in this quarter.
Moving to Sportskeeda, Sportskeeda U.S. organic traffic decline post the Google March Core update, which led to a 21% year-on-year revenue drop to INR 48.1 crores and EBITDA of INR 5.4 crores, prompting swift cost optimization through content cost renegotiation and right-sizing. Management expects traffic stability in the coming quarter, drawing a recovery experience from a similar algorithm impact on its PFN property.
Other properties in the portfolio are delivering strong results with stable growth and standout performances from recent acquisitions such as Primetimer, ITR, PFN, and Soap Central. For the first time in Q1 FY26, PFN and broke even positioning Absolute Sports for a good rebound and sustained growth. On a consolidated basis, Datawrkz, including Space & Time , reported 313% year-on-year revenue growth and 283% EBITDA growth, delivering INR 10.3 crores in revenue and INR 2.6 crores in EBITDA in Q1.
The combined operations and unlocked client synergies broadened cross-market offerings and opened access to new industry segments. Datawrkz also continues on its path to shift higher-margin product lines within its independent AdTech operations. Further Space & Time acquisition is being leveraged to scale U.K. growth. With this, I conclude my remark, and we will now open the call for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the attached telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Ladies and gentlemen, we request you to please limit your questions to two per participant and rejoin the queue for the follow-up question. The first question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi. Thanks for the opportunity. Firstly, the gaming business is now led by two of the newer additions to the portfolio. So it would be good to understand how we should see the seasonality and scale potential in Fusebox and the part of the business if you could throw some light.
Hi Rahul. This is Nitish. So for Fusebox Games, the seasonality, I think for all gaming businesses, the seasonality is the October to December, which is Q3, is usually the best quarter due to Christmas holidays, etc., given a lot of the revenues are coming from Western markets. I think in addition to that, specifically for Fusebox Games, the seasonality is also mirrored by the airing of the TV shows that the games are made on.
So for example, Love Island was airing in Q1 and Q2, especially in Q2 in the U.S., which did very well. So you would see a spike in revenues during that period. So I think there will be certain nuances specific to each business. At the same time, an overarching seasonality with the peak of revenues in Q3 for gaming business will continue as well.
Right. I n Fusebox, you're saying Q2 is better for the U.S. market, and there we are also expected to announce another IP. So does any color you could give on the scalability potential of this business from a Q3 perspective?
Yeah, sure. What I can do is, since we have Terry, who is the CEO of Fusebox, on the call, the first time he's attending the call, I can ask him to answer what he's working on currently. But lastly, we are seeing Fusebox move from a one-title company to a multi-title company now with four titles either launched or in the process of being launched. So Terry, over to you to talk a bit about the current status at Fusebox.
Oh, thank you, Nitish, a nd thanks for the question. So yeah, as you can see, since being acquired by Nazara, our main focus has been leveraging some of the center of excellence at Nazara as well as our core engine to expand away from being a single IP to a multi-IP studio a nd that is essentially going to be the continued plan moving forward.
So as you can see, we've already released one game. We're due to release Big Brother very soon. T hen we already have another IP, which the team are actively building right now with a plan to release early next year. So yeah, basically leveraging the support from Nazara and continuing to build out and acquire new IPs with our expanded presence. That is essentially the plan for the Fusebox team.
Super. Thank you, Terry.
Yeah. Thanks a lot for that. J ust last bit from my side, a few questions on the esports side of the business. One is, what is driving the additional losses in the NODWIN business? Is it specific to this quarter and gradually it should come off? Is there an annual plan on what kind of number we could see there?
S econdly, the austerity comment that you have made on the Sportskeeda business, does that mean that this pain could last slightly longer? While you have also commented that your SEM study suggests this could revive as of this one or two quarters. So any color on that would be great, thanks.
Good questions, Rahul. A gain, I have the leaders of each business to answer. So Akshat, maybe you can come in for the NODWIN side of things.
Of course. Hi everyone. I think the simple answer to this question is, look, esports and the youth culture that is being built right now in the world, as you can see from our very high revenue growth, even at a very large base right now, is predominantly led by a very strong IP push across the world. Most companies in the world are pushing for newer and newer IPs, and so does NODWIN, right?
So while we have Playground, we are expanding Comic-Con into more locations this year. We are also going and launching more seasons of Playground as we go forward. Our BGMS series continues to go ahead and do extremely well on Star Sports. But we are also going and competing not only in the Indian market, we are also competing everywhere in the world market.
As we move ahead and keep on focusing on global growth and our ambition is to be the top two companies in youth entertainment across the world in the next three to five years, we are on track to go ahead and do that. We are already number three and number four in the world. We want to be number one and number two.
I think that is the intention for us to go ahead and do. There will be some experiments that I do and some acquisitions that I do will not work. I have two explicit failures that we've tried that have not done well. One was the Wings one, which we talked about earlier in a couple of quarters a nd Freaks has also not done well predominantly because of German slowdown and the European slowdown per se in the world, and including the Taiwan risk that comes because of U.S. sanctions on different parts of the world.
So those headwinds keep on coming in between what we are trying to do, and some of those investments that we try will not work out. On the other side, some of them work out so phenomenally that it's not funny, right? Comic-Con has expanded from five to eight last year. They are going to do 11 this year. We've just announced that, and then we continue to go ahead and take it global across the world. We'll be going to more than two, three countries as we go forward.
So as we keep on going and working towards building an IP portfolio for youth entertainment, including esports, we will have one or two of these off chances that if NODWIN per se does normal growth out of its own accruals as such. But once in a while, we will have these acquisitions that will come in.
We've also thought long and hard about the fact that should we not do this, should we be very conservative and just hunker down and do this? W e've decided that it's actually better for us to go ahead and do well across the world and go ahead and keep on delivering what we want to go ahead and do a nd that's where Nazara's support in helping us raise funding from around the world is very beneficial and very, very appreciated by us. They've not sold a single share in us.
They believe in us as much as they believed when we got invested in by them. But they're also giving us the freedom to leave the parents' home and go fly and do wonderful things. So we're very appreciative. I know I've just answered your question, but hopefully this also sets context for someone else who might be asking questions.
Thanks, Akshat. Rahul, I hope that answered your question on NODWIN. For Sportskeeda, obviously, this last quarter has been disappointing for us after a really fantastic run over many, many quarters in the last two, three years. But we are very hopeful that this will recover.
Aniruddha, who was the Chief Strategy Officer of Sportskeeda, can deep dive into it, explain what has been really the cause of this problem, as well as what are the actions taken and what is our expectation going forward. A lso talk about some of the new properties that have been doing quite well for us. Aniruddha, over to you.
Yeah, thank you, Nitish, a nd thank you for the question. I think we've been hit, obviously, by a Google Core update. This is something that happens occasionally to sites, not very frequently, but it does tend to happen. In our internal portfolio, as we mentioned, it happened to PFM.
We had similar austerity measures at that point in time to make sure that we are leaner to figure out how much time this is going to take and then be flexible on the operational side. So to answer your question specifically on the austerity measures, they've been carefully calibrated to ensure that we both have a chance of really bouncing back. But at the same time, if the period of recovery gets extended a little bit more than what we expect, then we are lean enough to ensure profitability and operational stability, right?
So that's on the sportskeeda.com side. As Nitish mentioned, in our entire portfolio, right now, only Sportskeeda.com is affected. If you look at what we have disclosed about our other properties, both Soap Central, Deltia's Gaming, ITR Wrestling, and now Primetimer, all of them have been growing fairly heavily.
In fact, the measures that we put in place for PFM last year have actually helped quite a bit post that recovery as well. So we've had the first non-season quarter where PFM has actually been profitable, right? That sort of puts us in a very good position as we enter into season in September, right?
So the outlook is that it should ideally base both on our internal observations as well as some of the external sites that we've observed. It should take anywhere between one to two quarters. That's the typical timeline. But if it is maybe slightly more or slightly less than that, then we have the flexibility and hence the austerity measures and the cost. Does that answer your question?
Yeah. Yeah. I have just one more point. A good start is that the other pieces are doing well. They're too small right now to lift up again. So is it safer to assume that on an annualized basis, revenue could be retained at an FY25 level, or it would be difficult given that one or two quarters, including the Q3, is an important quarter, we might not see that kind of a momentum? So we could be down this year. Is it a possibility?
So right now, we are not commenting on the annual revenue figures. The idea is that we look at how the next quarter plays out and how all of our properties do together, right? There has just been one quarter since this hit has happened. Luckily, we got into action really early on just to ensure that we are well prepared. But as things go along, in the next quarter or so, we'll give you an update on what that guidance might be.
Sure. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Aniruddha. We can move on to the next set of questions.
Thank you. A reminder to the participant, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. The next question is from the line of Aditi Parmar from I-Wealth. Please go ahead. Hello.
Yeah. Hi, Aditi. This is Nitish.
Hi, sir. I also wanted to understand what would be included in the other income because it has come so high this quarter.
Yeah. I think the largest contributor to our other income is gain that we booked due to Stan, the investment we had made in Stan. So we had made an investment in Stan last year. Stan is a gaming community product which is doing extremely well a nd we did a follow-on investment of $1 million earlier this year, I think last month.
Y ou've had many other marquee investors participate for a total fundraiser of approximately $9-$10 million, including Google and Bandai Namco and many other well-reputed companies. So we're quite excited about that business, and it's growing extremely fast. But the other income largely comprises of a INR 66 crore gain on Stan.
Okay. Okay, sir. O n the Curve Games, can you elaborate on how will the growth come in on back of what IPs would it be? How can we see the future growth in this segment, in this company?
Yeah, sure. I'm going to call in Rohit Sharma, who joined us as an Executive Director to answer this one. Given Rohit's vast experience in the PC and console gaming space in the last many years, he's actually working very closely with the Curve team on our behalf a nd we'll be able to answer this in more detail. Rohit, over to you.
Thanks, Nitish. Yeah, hi. So just to let you know, Curve Games is one of the leading indie publishing game publishing studios in the U.K. Obviously, they get revenue globally. One is that historically, they have had great success with a lot of successful IPs that they have built, like For The King and Human: Fall Flat, which still continue to do well.
The team's core strength is that they have an extremely strong relationship in the PC and console space. They have extremely strong relationships with all the large platforms like Sony, like Microsoft, Steam, and Nintendo, a nd on the development side, they are one of the most coveted publishers from studios to publish their games. We have a very strong pipeline.
In fact, we have just greenlit two very strong IPs that will start developing next quarter and will give us growth as we go on. But to answer your question, there are existing IPs and long-tail IPs that are with Curve, like Human: Fall Flat, Dungeons of Hinterberg, For The King. W e have Wobbly Life on Switch 2, which will continue to give us growth.
Plus, we have also, as I said, invested in two or three very strong IPs which will give us growth in the future. So that's kind of the strategy and the growth trajectory for Curve.
Thank you, sir. That answers my question. Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to the participant. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. The next question is from the line of Sachin Dixit from JM Financial. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Sachin from JM. I have two questions. The first one is on our dependence on platforms. Now, I don't know how you think of it, right? Obviously, because that dependence has impacted our business in the past as well, right, when Apple changed some rationale and now Google. So how do you think of that dependence? How do you hedge against it, or how do you basically mitigate the risk related to these platform-related risks?
Sure. So Sachin, let me take that answer. I think one thing, obviously, is that there is some level of dependence on these very large platforms like Apple and Google, and we can't really run away from that. That said, there are a lot of changes happening in the ecosystem which is reducing dependence. One, from a Nazara perspective, our business model, which includes in-app purchases as well as advertising revenues, sponsorship revenues, to a certain extent hedges the risks of these platforms.
In addition to that, for example, web flows are being enabled now on a lot of these platforms where you can build customers directly. As you would be reading, there are a lot of global companies contesting some of the policies of these platforms, which will open up the platforms to a certain extent.
So I think there's a natural tendency for the platforms to open up over the next two, three years. W e also are very actively working on, for example, enabling web flows on products like Fusebox. They already have a pilot running. Lastly, I think the Curve Games business that we have acquired diversifies us to a different set of platforms. We are seeing a lot of business coming in now on the PC and console side from Steam, Nintendo. So I think there's also a certain diversification of platform beyond Apple and Google through the core acquisition.
Yeah. So I think basically getting more into these spaces helps us there.
Yeah.
Sure. So my second question is on PokerBaazi, right? So I know obviously this quarter's losses could be on account of the higher IP spends. But still, what is your visibility on the business, right, trusting that regulatory environment remains highly uncertain?
B asically, if I do a math of look at your shareholding in PokerBaazi, your losses are almost like INR 35-36 crore from that business a nd our EBITDA overall for the quarter is INR 47 crore. So in that sense, it makes us slightly sort of open to all the challenges that might come on that piece. How do you think of it? What is your visibility and profitability?
Yeah. Sachin, I'll give you my perspective and then also pull in Puneet, who is the founder of PokerBaazi, to talk a bit about how he sees it from his perspective. I think we are very excited about the PokerBaazi business. They continue to dominate and increase their market share. A s you know, with a lot of these skill-based real money gaming platforms, liquidity on the platform is a very large moat.
I believe PokerBaazi has kind of got that significant advantage. T hat's what you're seeing given that scale year on year, revenue growth being significant. The EBITDA loss you refer to in Q1 is obviously on account of a large brand campaign on IPL a nd most of that has been front-loaded in the year. So Q1 is where you'll really see that large impact. You won't see much of that in the coming quarters.
So I think overall, very exciting. All the metrics of the product continue to go north a nd we believe this is potentially a large cash flow business for us in the years to come. Puneet, you can add to that in a little bit more detail, maybe how you guys are thinking.
Yeah. Thank you, Nitish. Hi, Sachin. So like Nitish explained, the spends during the quarter one were already planned a nd the aggressive branding campaign in quarter one has achieved its objective of driving the top of the funnel growth, which has also resulted in the required platform engagement. DAUs and other MAUs have been on the all-time high.
In quarter two, our focus is mostly on leveraging this momentum to unlock the full monetization potential for the new and the reactivated users and to optimize the cohort system as well. So we really believe that with the things lined up in the second quarter, the Circuit Online Qualifiers, the anniversary promotions, we are very well positioned to deliver one of our strongest quarters in quarter two.
So as to your spends on quarter one, that is actually as per the plan because IPL as well as Shark Tank, but both front-loaded.
Quickly, if you can share the impact of these sort of one-time-ish spends in Q1 in IPL and Shark Tank?
Because of these spends, what we have seen during the quarter one is that we have not only increased the, I would say, the session depth of all the users, but the ARPUs have also increased a nd what we have also seen during this.
Sorry. I meant the amount of spend that is there, which might not sustain in the coming quarters. That's what I was trying to understand.
The IPL branding spends and the Shark Tank spends have been completely booked in the previous quarter itself. So they would not be coming in. The IPL spends were somewhere around INR 85 crores, and the Shark Tank spends were around INR 25 crores on top of that.
Understood. Sure. Thanks so much, Puneet, and thanks, Nitish.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Bajaj from Choice Institutional Equities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hello. Good morning, all. Thanks for taking my question. So firstly, I wanted to understand strategy on Smaaash going forward as to what we are thinking on expanding in this front. Secondly, on the Kiddopia side, so we have seen that there has been a rise in subscribers churn. So do we see any growth coming in this financial year? Yeah, that is two questions.
Kunal, so I think in the whole offline entertainment and gaming category of ours, we have two businesses. One is Funky Monkeys, and the second is Smaaash. Funky Monkeys is already well on its growth path. It is adding new centers now every month, and we believe it's a highly scalable business.
It's a profitable business with a quick break-even on the CapEx that we do, so we are very excited about that opportunity, and we will see continued growth in that in the coming quarters. Now, coming to Smaaash, as you know, we've acquired it through NCLT. It's been about two months or less, and we have, I think, two-pronged strategies here.
One is to ensure that the existing business is stabilized, revitalized over the next few months, and we're operating 11 centers, and our whole idea is to ensure that these 11 centers get revitalized.
I think the parallel process we are working on is to reimagine Smaaash 2.0. What formats will it have? What are the new experiences it will bring? How will we integrate synergies with the rest of the Nazara ecosystem? So I think these are the two approaches we are having. I think in another six months or so, we should be able to come out with a Smaaash 2.0 POC.
Once that is established successfully, we will look at expanding this aggressively. So I think the next two quarters is going to be most of this work rather than very active expansion of centers at this point of time. I think FY27 is when you should expect rapid expansion of centers.
Okay. I think that.
Yeah. Coming to your question on Kiddopia, I think we've seen good performance this quarter generally. The subscriber decline has been stemmed, and you would have seen in the presentation that we've seen positive KPIs across the board, whether it's churn, whether it's CPT, the cost per acquisition that we are getting, etc., so I think we continue to feel quite bullish about the growth opportunities.
I do understand it's taken a long time coming. We've been working on this for a few quarters or more, but I do think that we are getting very close to come back to growth. I think another quarter or two, and we should be able to see growth again.
Sure. Thanks. Also, a follow-up question on that. So as a broad corporate level, we had a target of around INR 300 crore EBITDA margins level. So EBITDA level, sorry. So how is our progress on that?
I think we're making great progress. Our guidance has been to achieve the INR 300 crore EBITDA in FY27, and I believe we're very much on track to achieve that or surpass that.
Sure. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhishek Banerjee from ICICI Securities. Please go ahead.
Hey. Hi. Just a couple of questions from my side. First off to Akshat. So what's the thought process on profitability in going ahead? So you have often explained to us how the older IPs kind of make decent margins.
But as you invest in newer IPs, the overall losses can come up. But given you have been doing this for some time now, and some of the older IPs are more than five years old, so what is the timeline that one should kind of build in for some profit delivery in NODWIN?
So the way to think about all our IPs is, again, think of it like a portfolio approach. I'll give an empirical example so you can look into it. So at any given time, since we do not know what the new game will be, what the new culture will be, what the new song will be, what the new event will be, what the new influencer will be, we have to go ahead and have our ear to the ground.
So think of it as angel investments. We need to go ahead and have anywhere between 10-20 micro IPs in incubation at any given time every year. These don't cost too much. They cost anywhere between INR 50,000 to maybe a couple of INR 5,000, INR 7,000, INR 8,000 each to go ahead and keep on running experiments on. It allows us to go ahead very quickly through this. This is our incubation and just keep on running experiments. We identify something that is worth investing in.
Either because of critical mass coming in, high engagement coming, high fashion coming in, we go ahead and invest in that potential. We don't still call it an IP, and we run a first-year experiment on it. A first-year experiment is to go ahead and be anywhere between about INR 10 lakh to about INR 40 lakhs.
Sorry to interrupt. But Mr. Abhishek, I request you to please be on mute while the management is answering your question. So please go ahead.
So we try this experiment for around IRN 10 lakhs to about INR 30-INR 40 lakhs and look at whether it's successful or not. Again, in the first stage, we have about a 70%-80% failure. In the second stage, we have about a 30%-50% failure because it doesn't work. It doesn't have enough depth. It doesn't have any traction.
Case in point, which is there, is a success for us. We invested in Case three to four years ago. Playground is another one that has done well. But behind every success, there are umpteen experiments that don't come to fruition. Typically, after the first year is where we go ahead and get behind traction after that. So we then invest into the second season, after the first one.
This would typically be between INR 50 lakh to about a INR 2 crore investment behind it. This is the time where we actually go ahead and make it, try to go ahead and make real money out of it. We go to sponsors. We go to media rights. We go to data rights. We go ahead and attempt to distribute a nd the partnerships behind it.
A gain, maybe 30%-50% failure rate here. Once this is established, it is now an IP. Then typically, the scale is getting very quickly. This is now growth stage. You would normally not have failures in growth stage. We are looking at acceleration. How much acceleration is always the question.
We typically, after the first two years, look at a payback between two more years to go ahead and have a full payback. T hen a long tail that keeps on going and giving value. For example, All That Matters is 15 years, a nd that's 14 years. PJ M asks, fifth year. You can look at all our global IPs. They go ahead and try to be multi-decade-long IPs. That allows us not to be dependent on either platforms, influencers, talent, IP, games, etc, and that's the portfolio approach that we want to go ahead and do.
If it all works, we get astronomical returns, but as we are building out of emerging markets and we're not building out of developed worlds, the failure rate is substantially higher, so the beta always is higher, but as we move more from a developing to a developed economy, we think traction in most of our core markets will be good.
Understood. In terms of what would be kind of the margins that your mature business is now making, if you could give some clarity on that?
Mature IPs is a good, better way to go ahead and do it. Mature IPs typically would have anywhere between 60%-75% margins, while net business would normally have a 20%-30% net margin.
Got it. Got it. Yeah. O ne more question for PokerBaazi, basically. So you were actually speaking on how your advertisements have helped in improving your engagement, customer engagement, and the session depth. So if you could talk a little bit on how advertisement can kind of drive that, because if you were to ask me, I can understand how advertising can drive customer acquisition, but how it can drive higher ARPUs, etc., would be great to understand.
Yeah. Sure. So on that, what we meant was that because of the advertisements, we get a long driving at top of the funnel growth, a nd once we do that, we have enough features within our system which help us drive those, I would say, session depth, retention, and ARPUs. A lso the new product innovation which we have done in the previous quarter, which includes a lot of these features on user set, user learnings.
We have added a Poker TV app with tailored content, PokerBaazi School, post-structured learning to advanced tools. S o that and PokerStats, one more tool has also been added in the last quarter, which is a tool for game analysis. So all these three tools together with having a big top of the funnel in terms of getting users eventually help us achieving these things.
Yeah. I would just add to that that when you have a large brand campaign happening, it also increases the brand credibility in the eyes of the consumer and therefore has a direct impact on usage and uplift in our pool because the players are then coming back and playing more because of brand trust.
Okay. Got it. Thanks. Thanks.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. The next question is from the line of Jinesh Joshi from PL Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. So my question is, with respect to the fundraiser in NODWIN, can you tell us how much is NODWIN planning to raise? S econdly, given the fact that Nazara will not participate in this fundraise, what will be our revised stake in the company?
Sorry, what's your question? The second question is, what will be our stake in the company?
Right. In NODWIN, what will be our revised stake post the fundraise?
Yeah. So I think there's going to be a bridge round first and then a larger raise. So the exact amounts are still to be finalized. So I won't be able to give you a specific equity position, but it'll be in the range of 46%-47% from what I understand at this point of time. Obviously, once this is completed, the necessary disclosures will be made in terms of exact numbers, etc.
Understood. Secondly, on PokerBaazi, I think we mentioned that the IPL spends were about INR 85 crore, and what we spent on Shark Tank was approximately INR 25. So in all, we have spent about INR 110 crore. If I look at our FY25 EBITDA for PokerBaazi, it was negative at approximately INR 58 crore.
Just wanted to know, given the kind of spends we have made in one year, I know these are front-loaded spends, so to say. But given the quantum, I mean, should we expect profitability in FY26 at the operating level a nd if not, I mean, when do you expect this business to kind of make profits at the operating level, given how the taxation situation is?
Yeah. Look, I think FY26, we do not expect to deliver profitability for PokerBaazi. FY27, we should, but it depends on our market positioning at that point of time and what's the right thing to do for the business. What is important to understand is that the marketing spend that we are doing today, or the branding spends that we are doing today, is very much driven by our desire to really dominate the market.
I t is something that is in our control to dial up or dial down as we would like. The core business in itself is very profitable. I f you were to dial down the marketing spends today, you would see a large amount of profitability be thrown up by the core business. So I think it's just our aggressive positioning to continue to dominate the market at this point of time. We believe that is the right strategy for this business.
Understood, and so one last question on Fusebox. Given the fact that we released Big Brother in May 2025, and I believe we have quite a few new IPs lined up over the course of the year. But if I look at 1Q, given the fact that there was a big launch expected, our user acquisition spend had risen a bit, and that is why our EBITDA margin was down to about 14.3%.
Now, given the fact that new launches are lined up, how should we think about the margin trajectory? Because historically, this number was quite high, and because of higher spends, it has got diluted a bit to about 14-odd%. So basically, your thoughts on the profitability side?
Yeah. Sure. Dinesh, so I think it's important to understand that most of the user acquisition spends that you see in Q1 is driven by spends on the Love Island game and not on the Big Brother game. The Big Brother game is really while the game is launched. Right now, the team is looking at the initial KPIs, which look very good, and iterating the game before we start scaling it up.
So most of the UA spend has happened on Love Island because the team was getting very attractive customer acquisition costs, also because of the airing of the TV show at the same time. T hese spends will get dialed down in the coming quarters, and you will see the profitability show up and the margins come up again. So I don't think new game launches will hurt margins a lot.
I think over a period of time, they will keep adding scale to the business. Generally, the gaming business, as you see, this quarter has delivered 24% odd margins, and we will continue to drive all our gaming businesses towards a 30% margin goal. That's our first milestone that we want to try and achieve. I'm not promising any specific timeline right now, but at least our internal thought process is to go towards that goal.
Understood, sir. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahil from Sapphire Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah. So just one question. If you could just highlight or summarize which of the divisions or the key businesses will be the main growth drivers for FY26 that's on the top line, and if you could provide any guidance to go with it.
Yeah. Sure. I think in terms of main growth drivers, at this point of time, if you look at Q1, we have seen Animal Jam perform very well for us. We've seen Funky Monkeys get onto a growth path. Fusebox, we are very excited about.
I think Curve should have a great year as well. The rest of the businesses, we are continuously plugging and working on building up. It will be something we are, like I was saying earlier, hoping that should get back to growth quite soon. In terms of guidance, we don't have any specific guidance for the year at this point of time.
Okay. Sure. Thank you. All the best.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. A reminder to the participants, anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.
Sure. Thank you, everyone, for joining today's call. Also, thank you for the leadership team in Nazara for spending the time answering all the questions patiently. Wish you all a very good day. Goodbye.
Bye.
Thank you. On behalf of PL Capital, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.