Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Nazara Technologies Q4 and FY25 Earnings Conference Call. 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 then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Jay Shetty from ICICI Securities. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Hello and hi everyone. On behalf of ICICI Securities, I welcome you all to the fourth quarter FY25 earnings call of Nazara Technologies. We have with us the management represented by Mr. Nitish Mittersain, CEO and Joint MD of Nazara Technologies. Mr. Rakesh Shah, CFO of Nazara Technologies. Ms. Anupriya Sinha Das, Head of Corporate Development, Nazara Technologies. Mr. Terry Li, CEO of Fusebox Games. Mr. Akshat Rathee, Co-founder and Managing Director of NODWIN Gaming. Mr. Ajay Pratap Singh, CEO of Absolute Sports Private Limited. Mr. Puneet Singh, Co-founder and CEO of Baazi Games. And Mr. Senthil Govindan, Founder and CEO of Datawrkz Business Solution Private Limited. I would like to hand over the call to the management for opening remarks. Over to you, Nitish, sir.
Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us, especially on a very rainy day in Mumbai. In FY25, we delivered our highest ever annual EBITDA of INR 153.5 crores on revenues of INR 1,624 crores, with a PAT of INR 62.5 crores. Our gaming EBITDA margins stood at 20%, as well as generated healthy operating cash, reinforcing our intent to focus on core gaming business going ahead. In Q4 FY25, we delivered revenues of INR 520.2 crores, up 95% year-on-year, and EBITDA of INR 51 crores, reflecting a 74% year-on-year increase. I'm also happy to share that since our IPO in FY21, four years ago, Nazara's revenues have grown 3.6 times, and EBITDA has grown 3.4 times, translating into a compounded growth of 38% and 36%, respectively. During this year, we have been fairly busy building out our strategic plans.
We acquired Fusebox Games in the U.K., establishing a strong hold in narrative-based mobile gaming. We also entered offline gaming with Funky Monkeys and Smaaash, creating a 360-degree gaming ecosystem. We took full ownership of Kiddopia, enabling fungible cash flows for faster strategic execution. We made our largest investment to date in PokerBaazi, strengthening our leadership in skill-based real money gaming, and we also acquired well-known gaming IPs from ZeptoLab. We've made strong progress on key leadership hires and strengthening our internal capabilities. Our Centers of Excellence in User Acquisition, analytics, and AI are rapidly taking shape, and they will drive cross-group efficiencies and enable organic scale-up in FY26. As we look ahead, the coming year, FY26, is poised to be a year of acceleration with increased contribution from high-margin gaming business, expecting to further strengthen our profitability.
Our latest acquisition, Curve Games, enhances our global publishing capabilities with a strong portfolio of PC and console titles, further expanding Nazara's footprint across Western markets. We remain focused on building a sharper and globally relevant gaming platform, defined by creativity, execution excellence, and strong IP ownership. With our growing presence across North America and Europe, strategic global acquisitions, and recognition among the world's top gaming publishers, Nazara is steadily making its mark on the global stage, not just as India's gaming leader, but as a rising force in the global gaming ecosystem. With this, I would like to request Anupriya to talk to you about segmental performance. Thank you, and over to you, Anupriya.
Thank you, Nitish. Good evening, everyone. Moving to the gaming segment, in Q4 FY25, our gaming segment revenue grew by 72%. EBITDA grew by 111%, with EBITDA margin of 21.4%. In FY25, the segment revenue grew by 27%, EBITDA by 27%, with EBITDA margin of 19.9%. Fusebox reported revenue of INR 161.6 crores and EBITDA of INR 30.2 crores in FY25 for the period it has been consolidated in the books of Nazara. Q4 FY25 revenue stood at INR 79.1 crores and EBITDA at INR 13.1 crores, up 149% year-on-year. Higher UA spend in Q4 FY25 led to a strong top-line growth with a temporary margin dip. These UA investments are expected to drive growth in FY26. Momentum will also be boosted by new game launches, starting with Big Brother and Bigg Boss in itself.
Moving to Kiddopia, in FY25, Kiddopia posted revenue of INR 191.8 crores and EBITDA of INR 43.7 crores, with a strong EBITDA margin of 22.8%. Revenue stood at INR 46.3 crores, with EBITDA of INR 9.3 crores in Q4 FY25, with an EBITDA margin of 20.1%. Kiddopia launched branded Mini Games in FY25 through strategic licensing deals with Moonbug and Mattel, featuring Little Angel and Barbie, respectively. A new partnership with Hasbro will introduce PJ Masks' theme content, featuring Catboy, Owlette, and Gekko, set to launch later this year. Moving to Animal Jam, revenue grew organically 11% to INR 104.9 crores, while EBITDA rose 16% to INR 21.9 crores. In Q4 FY25, revenue increased 12% to INR 26.8 crores, with EBITDA surging 69% to INR 4.9 crores.
This growth was driven by strong engagement with premium features such as wishing coins, super boxes, and theme content, highlighting the effectiveness of our live ops and monetization strategy. Animal Jam signed a partnership with Slinky in January 2025 and is developing a new casual game aimed at cross-generational appeal. Now, moving to Funky Monkeys, Nazara acquired 60% of Funky Monkeys, a leading indoor play center for kids aged 2 to 14 years in Tier 1 Indian cities. FY25 revenue was INR 17 crores and an EBITDA of 7.3 crores, with a flat growth due to temporary closures in Gujarat, partially offset by gains in Chembur and Bandra. Q4 FY25 revenue was INR 4.3 crores. EBITDA rose 45% year-on-year to INR 1.6 crores. Focus in FY25 was on stabilizing operations and reopening centers. FY26 will prioritize expansion, center revamps, and enhanced marketing and CRM with Nazara's strategic support.
Moving on to PokerBaazi, Moonshine, PokerBaazi's parent, is accounted as an associate and not consolidated in our books. PokerBaazi delivered strong operating metrics in Q4 FY25, gross gaming revenue up 50% year-on-year, gross transaction value up 38%, and deposit up 35%. Moonshine reported revenue of INR 588.3 crores in FY25, with an EBITDA of negative INR 57.5 crores. Q4 revenue was INR 180.5 crores, with EBITDA of negative INR 22.1 crores. March 2025 was PokerBaazi's best-ever revenue month, driven by NPS 2025, IPL, and Shark Tank campaigns, and increased mid to high stakes engagement, strengthening monetization and top-funnel growth for FY26. Moving to other segments, NODWIN continues to execute its strategy of strong organic growth and targeted acquisitions, backed by hands-on integration across teams, geographies, and internal delivery centers. Q4 FY25 grew 50% year-on-year post Wings consolidation. The business update will be covered by Akshat in a later section.
Moving to Datawrkz, in October 2024, Datawrkz, through its UK subsidiary, acquired 100% of Space and Time for an equity value of GBP 4.8 million, or INR 52.3 crores. Following the acquisition, S&T has been consolidated into Nazara's financials. On a standalone basis, Datawrkz reported 3% year-on-year growth and 13% year-on-year EBITDA growth in FY25. This performance reflects a successful shift towards more profitable business lines in its independent AdTech operations. Absolute Sports, including Sportskeeda and PFN, grew its revenue and EBITDA by 22% and 19%, respectively, in FY25. The core Sportskeeda business continues to grow well, with revenue and EBITDA increasing by 25% and 25%, respectively, in FY25. PFN revenue grew by a robust 51% in Q4 FY25 in revenue, reflecting a strong recovery with each quarter. This business continues to have strong EBITDA margins in Q4 FY25.
In May 2025, Absolute Sports has signed definitive agreements to acquire two IPs, TJRWrestling.net and itrwrestling.com, from Titan Insider Digital in an all-cash deal valued at $1.25 million, or around INR 10.5 crores. Before we open the floor for Q&A, we'd like to take a moment to spotlight two of our key businesses. Starting with NODWIN, I'll hand over the mic to Akshat. Akshat, over to you.
Thank you, everyone. Just doing a sound check if you can hear me?
Yes, we can.
Perfect. Thank you, everyone, for going and joining the call. I'm very happy to go and take you through what NODWIN's been up to the last year. As you can imagine, as a very public action item company, we have been acquiring some assets and very, very actively get our hands dirty to go ahead and do consolidation, but also integration of those assets into our businesses. Typically, we acquire companies for growing one of three verticals for us, one of three metrics for us, and it's very always important to go. We either grow in geographies we care about, we either invest into IPs we care about, or monetization metrics that we care about in any activity. You'll be happy to know that our live business vertical, which typically has DreamHack, the Gaming Matters, All That Matters, NH7, and all our Comic-Con properties, is doing extremely well.
When we acquired Comic Con, they were running five IPs, and we have gone from five to eight in the first year of acquisition, and we are now expanding from eight to multiple cities in double digits now this year. And we'll also, since we acquired this internationally, we'll also be expanding Comic Con internationally to multiple markets this year. We'll also go and talk about our portfolio of the matters. So Gaming Matters went into the UAE, Cricket Matters with the ICC in the USA, with Sport Matters with Hong Kong, and All That Matters remains the large one that sits out of India. DreamHack, obviously, does really well, and you'd be very happy to know that now, as gaming and esports are all doing well, we have states that come to support us in our activities. This is all very great news for us.
Our content IP, which is typically our influencer business and our media business and our broadcast business, keeps on growing really well. Playground happens to be one of our marquee properties. You might have seen that we just announced a big partnership with Endemol/Banijay to go ahead and expand that into multiple languages in the country of India and also co-develop this into other languages across the world. We'll also be building other properties with Endemol and Banijay in different markets. Our influencer partnerships on our MCN are, again, doing extremely well with master partnerships in multiple geographies with YouTube, Meta, and X.
We've also been going and doing something which is the flywheel approach, which is the ability to go and get really large clients to go ahead and keep on engaging with our portfolio approach, which has allowed us to go ahead and get over 100% growth in all our large client bases, the 50 people who typically pay about $1 million to us. So across the world, that is doing. The esports business itself, with our BGMI properties, BGMS on Star Sports. We are also executing BMPS and the Valorant Championship in India, and also the StarLadder has announced the world's largest major on Counter-Strike in Budapest in December that we are going and doing. Tickets are selling out like hotcakes. Finally, our Central Asia division is doing, again, very, very well.
We've been able to go ahead and make beachheads into Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, while our German operations with Prime League on esports continues to do well, and that has allowed us to be market leaders in CIS in Africa within 18 months of operations and setting up a bit, and these are typically growing because some of our founders we acquire, you typically have two, three people, founder teams, they go ahead and take new missions, and they go across the world to go ahead and find newer and crazier things to go ahead and do, and they'll help us to go ahead and have very high momentum in what we are building. Finally, our Middle East, which is UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, continue to do well.
The EBITDA loss that you actually go ahead and see is predominantly because of our NH7 Pune cancellation and the Freaks 4U EBITDA hits that are there. And the good news is we've been able to go ahead and absorb most of those hits because of the diversification and the integration we were able to go ahead and do. I also like to say NODWIN's the big ship that we fly, and sometimes we don't know which engine gets hit every year, either a game gets banned or something bad happens, but the diversification and the integration has helped us go ahead and not be hit as badly as that. And we are also focused very clearly into turning around Freaks 4U into core EBITDA-positive engines as we go forward.
Final note on BrandScale, which is WINGS, we had put proactive measures in play for a one-time impairment of INR 15 crores on the OCD investments that we had done. That were in Q4 of 2025, and there are also additional loans worth about INR 25 crores, which will be provisioned in due course based on recoverability and fixing of that business. And finally, we'd also like to go ahead and declare that NODWIN will continue to go ahead and raise additional capital to fuel its growth in the future, as we go ahead and carry forward this momentum and trying to become one of the largest players in the youth media culture in the world. Back to you, Anupriya. Thank you.
Thank you, Akshat. I'll now call upon Puneet Singh, who's the co-founder and COO of PokerBaazi. Puneet, over to you.
Thank you, Anupriya. Hi, everyone. Just to begin with, FY 2024 to 2025, our journey has been about capturing the market share and also optimizing deposits to the gross revenue percentages. We all know that the new GST regime on deposits came into effect from October 2023. Our strategy post-October has all been about optimizing the deposits to the gross revenue numbers and also about brand building. In terms of deposit to gross revenue percentage, we went from 33% to 57% currently. In terms of the gross gaming revenue, we grew from 848 crores to 1363 crores. That's almost 60% growth from financial year 2024 to 2025. We were able to achieve this because of our product optimizations and scale. The growth from quarter four, financial year 2024 to 2025, represents that. We grew our GGR from 229 crores to 343 crores while optimizing the deposits.
The deposits grew only 35% during that period. Brand building becomes even more important post the new GST regime because at scale, we need to reduce our marketing spends to achieve higher EBITDA margins. We have spent monies on properties like Shark Tank, IPL, to create that top-of-the-mind recall for Poker and PokerBaazi. Apart from that, we've also launched and spent monies on IPs like National Poker Series and Circuit to support the brand recall. The result of all this is an excellent March 2025 where we have recorded our peak numbers. Our focus will continue to grow on the entire Poker system and the ecosystem around Poker. Our focus will be on the pillars of the game like watch, learn, play, analyze, and glorify. And for all such features, we have made some products around that as well.
We have developed a Poker TV app to support the watch aspect, where a person can personalize and content-based one Poker journey can be seen about. There is, for the learn aspect, we have the PokerBaazi School app, which focuses on the learning aspect of the game. Then we have, for the play aspect, we have the best-in-class desktop and the mobile products, which are highly engaging in terms of the gameplay. For the analyze, we have the PokerShots tool, which helps one analyze and improve one's gameplay. And for glorify, we are building our products like and IPs like National Poker Series and Indian Poker Masters, which helps the winners and also helps us in glorifying that.
Going forward, our focus will continue to be spending on the ecosystem of Poker, and a main driver for the long-term growth would be the levers like watch, learn, play aspect in glorifying. We all know Poker is a global recognized game, and we, the category leaders, currently will be focusing on growing the market of Poker in India, which will indeed benefit our numbers going forward as well. Thank you, Anupriya. Over to you.
Thank you. With this, I conclude my remarks, and we'll now open the call for Q&A. I would request Nitish, Rakesh, and the rest of the management team to join me for the session.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone 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 will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Jinesh Joshi from PL Capital. Please proceed.
Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity. Sir, my question is on NODWIN. I mean, what is the path to profitability over here? I mean, we have seen an EBITDA loss of INR 15 crores in FY25, and you also mentioned in the opening remarks that the performance of Freaks 4U has been a bit subpar, and we intend to turn that around in the near future. In addition to that, I believe additional provision of INR 25 crores from WINGS might also come through. So just to get the big picture right, I mean, how should we think about profits coming back into esports while in terms of scale, we are doing reasonably well, but I think consistently we have been in the negative territory at the EBITDA level. So your thoughts on that?
Hi, this is Nitish here. As you know, for us, all along, we have fcused on growth for the esports business and the NODWIN business, given that they are market leaders, and we want to ensure that we build the right kind of modes for this business going forward to take advantage of the macro trends that esports offers us and the market leadership opportunity that it offers us. So I think broadly, we've all along been okay with kind of break-even business as long as it's doing strategically and growing fast. I think that's what we have approached. There are a couple of issues, a little lag on Freaks 4U profitability, and the surprise last-minute cancellation of NH7 Weekender colored the P&L a bit, but we are quite hopeful that FY26 will see better. Akshat, can you give your comments to this?
This is exactly what Nitish had said. My answer to this is our core businesses remain extremely profitable. The reason why you can go ahead and see us go ahead and have a small EBITDA loss that we had. Now, our acquisitions that you want to go ahead and do, right? To us, these are the nature of the business of things when you build. You'll see that across the world, very few companies in the world in the esports and the pop culture space that we are in are profitable because most of them go ahead and invest into long-term growth. That's exactly where we want to go ahead and do. We do not like losing money. It's very against our DNA to go ahead and lose money.
We will continue to go ahead and make sure that we hedge our businesses as we go forward. But we do live in a territory where last-minute aberrations are the nature. Rest assured that I want to go ahead and make sure that having an EBITDA positive is extremely important for us. But we'll continue to go ahead and create momentum as we want to be the best in the world.
Sure. One bookkeeping question from my side. So if I look at our commission cost, it has gone up to about INR 61 crores in this quarter versus the past run rate of about INR 15-INR 18 crores. Now, I believe this cost predominantly pertains to the App Store commission for our early learning business. So has there been any change in the share with our App Store partners? So that's one. And secondly, another bookkeeping one is if I look at our stock in trade, it is at about INR 39 crores in this quarter. But I believe after the deconsolidation of BrandScale, we do not have any product-centric business, if I'm right. So what does this exactly pertain to?
Jinesh, I'll take this. On your first question around the App Store commission, it's because of the addition of the business of Fusebox. So it's not only for PokerBaazi or early learning, but also for the addition of Fusebox, which is a much larger business. So I think that's what's happening. I think what you should look at is that globally, the App Stores are under significant pressure to reduce commissions. There have been recent rulings. We'll go let people buy stuff. Can I ask everyone to be on mute so that I can hear? A lot of stores, etc., and starting to see early signs? I think the internal mandate is to push downwards on these commissions that we pay. I hope that answers your first question. I'm not sure I got your second question properly. Could you just repeat that?
Sir, the purchase of stock in trade in this quarter, that figure is INR 39 crores, and I believe we don't have any product-centric business after the deconsolidation of BrandScale, so what does this pertain to?
Jinesh, I will have to check on that and come back to you.
Sure, sure. Sir, just one last question from my side, and that is on PokerBaazi. I think in Q3, we were in the positive territory at the EBITDA level with about INR 18 crores of EBITDA. And in this quarter, I think we are into losses at about INR 22 crores. And also for the full year, given the change in tax regime, I think our EBITDA loss, what we have stated, is about INR 58 crores. So from a two-tier perspective, how should we think about the path to profitability given the fact that we are operating in a slightly unfavorable regime? And what would be that break-even level which we should ideally look forward in this business?
Sure. So in terms of PokerBaazi, I'll give it the first shot and then we can do it. I think clearly, again, with PokerBaazi, right, it's by far the clear market leader. And it's imperative for us to create the maximum moat for this business and the biggest brand, which will become a long-term differentiator for us. And I think from that perspective, the PokerBaazi team is quite aggressively using the current market situation to build out this brand. You will see the movements in profitability depending on the season and the spend. So for example, the first quarter, Q4, you would have seen a lot of spend on Shark Tank. Q1 of 2026, you will see significant spend on IPL. So I think some of these spends are seasonal in nature when the large opportunity presents itself. And that's what you're really seeing.
Puneet, do you want to add something here?
Yeah. Thank you. So just to add on it, in the Poker market in India, we already hold around 60% market share. Like Nitish rightly pointed out, the quarter four negative was because of the spends which we had done on the Shark Tank and the IPL spends which fall in the first quarter of financial year 2026. The idea behind is to grow the market. Being the market leaders, we will be the first ones to benefit once the market grows further in terms of Poker. And we are very confident on doing that going forward. Thank you.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Samarth Patel from ICICI Securities. Please proceed.
Thanks for providing me the opportunity. My first question is on NODWIN. So can you just help me with NODWIN's revenue mix between, let's say, ticketing, IPs, sponsorships, and merchandise?
Akshat, can you take that, please?
Of course. The way to think about the NODWIN business is actually not that. So I'm happy to take you through a very one-minute crash course on this. IPs are not independent, right? So I'll give you an example. NODWIN works on a strategy which is called the triple-dip strategy. That means our influencer that we manage through Playground and we discover through Playground is the person we go ahead and create content with. That influencer then goes and offers to go ahead and do brand endorsements. That influencer also comes and plays at our festival and then also participates in our esports tournaments, which is there, right? And then finally, we launch business lines with this influencer for any merchandising. So where do we put what becomes there?
You can actually go ahead and look at categorization across all our downstream subsidiaries in our consolidated results, which has line by line into the separate businesses that go ahead and do this. On top of that, you will actually have intra-company transfers where those services, those products are then utilized across the board. So when you actually go ahead and look at our standalones of our downstream companies, I think you'll be able to go ahead and look at some semblance of an answer. But we actually do not go ahead and report revenue or profitability in any of our segments.
Understood, Akshat. That was helpful. My second question is on Curve Games. So with the Curve Games global publishing reach, how do we plan to scale, let's say, Indian developed games through this channel?
What would success look like for us over the, let's say, medium term over the next two to three years?
Sure. I'm going to take that decision, Nitish. So I think what we have been noticing in the Indian market is that increasingly, a large number of games are being developed on the PC platform. And we see this even in IGDC, etc., which is the large gaming conference that happens in India, that there's a lot of velocity of Indian developers. Now, with AI available to a lot of the developers in India, they can also make PC games faster, better, and somewhat bridge the talent gap that has been there on certain aspects like monetization or graphics, etc., right, compared to global titles. So I think India is going to have a large opportunity and large funnel of games coming in. But a lot of these developers in India don't really have access to global markets or the marquee publishers.
So I think with Nazara now owning Curve Games, Nazara becomes a perfect bridge for Indian developers to the world. Curve already has fantastic relations with the major distribution platforms on PC and console. And I think Indian developers can take advantage of the same through the Nazara gateway. So I think that's what we are quite excited about. Even from Curve's perspective, right, getting high-quality games at potentially lower costs would improve their unit economics a lot. So I'm sure they will be very excited in coming down to India and spending time on ground with us, discovering what the Indian market has to offer. In terms of what success would look in the next two to three years is our ability to work together with the Curve team who's already very strong. They have a fantastic management team who understands what games could potentially work.
If we can add the Nazara network credibility brand to them and jointly be able to negotiate and get a good funnel of games to publish and see some breakouts from that funnel that we launch in the next year or two, I think that would be very successful for Curve. They've already seen successful titles like For The King, Human: Fall Flat, etc., which have been very popular, and we are very hopeful to get more such titles in our funnel over the next couple of years.
Understood, Nitish. That was helpful. My next question is on capital allocation. So for FY25, I believe we would have deployed around INR 1,500 crore towards inorganic growth. Now, what IRR threshold that you have in mind across verticals, and how does that shape our FY26 capital deployment?
Yeah. I think for us, what is important is that the business that we acquire. It's not short-term IRR that we are chasing. It can strategically plug into the overall ecosystem we are building. Obviously, as you know, we like to acquire businesses that are profitable, cash flow generating, and can help scale, take us to the next level. So I think one thing we are quite clear about is we are seeing across our investments that our core gaming investments, where we are having a thesis of acquiring established gaming IPs, good teams, decent scale of revenue, existing profitability. We really like that segment of the business because there are a lot of tailwinds coming ahead of us. Like I mentioned earlier, the App Store commissions are potentially coming down.
AI is going to help us improve the velocity of content at the same cost or potentially optimize the cost. So we see future margin expansion happening in these businesses and also very healthy cash flows. These businesses are usually working on positive working capital. They get paid by an Apple or a Google before they have to spend money on user acquisition, etc. So we like that as well. So I think this year, we are surely going to double down our capital investments towards that segment.
Understood, Nitish. That was really helpful. Thanks for taking up my questions.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Madhavendra, an individual investor. Please proceed.
Yeah. Hello. Hello. Am I audible?
Yes, sir.
Yes.
Yeah. Sir, I have two or three questions. First, our depreciation and amortization has increased significantly in FY25. So where do you see this in FY26? And the same for advertising and promotion expenses. And the third question is, Kiddopia is still struggling. I think it's been two years, and the segment is still struggling. And the recent acquisition Fusebox Games. I was checking its last three years' revenue is stagnant. So how do you plan to bring growth in this segment? And the third one is, we have acquired a lot of businesses in the last two to three years, and revenues have almost doubled, really encouraging. But the bottom line is still, I think, not showing that growth. So can't we just consolidate all these entities as of now and aim to bring the growth in these entities rather than again going into acquisition in the years ahead?
Those are many questions, so I'll try and answer some of them. I didn't really get your first and second question well, but let me answer a couple of questions, and you can ask the follow-ons. So with respect to Kiddopia, as you know, we took control of this business a few months ago by acquiring 100% stake from the founders. And thereafter, we have put in our own growth strategies in play. We are starting to see results. As you can see from our presentation, in this quarter, you've seen a significant drop in the cost per trial, which had gone up to $40, $42. It's come down to $33, $34. It's almost a 20% reduction on cost per trial, while more or less maintaining the amount of money we are spending and the number of trials we are getting. So I think that is a positive sign.
We've also increased monthly pricing from $9.99 to $12.99, somewhere in the middle of Q4, and we will start seeing results of that. That has been fairly well accepted, and we've not seen any real negative reaction to that. It's also helped us increase our annual activations to 40% from 30%. Usually, the annual activations give us better R4. So that's again a positive. So I think we're seeing a lot of positives in what we are doing. We've put in technology layers which allow us for faster A/B testing. There are a lot of different experiments we are doing to try and get a sweeter spot that allows us to scale the business. Lastly, we've spoken many times about building IPs or bringing IPs to Kiddopia. The good news is that you've started seeing that happen.
We launched a small IP called Little Angel from Moonbug, and we've seen good results from that. Then we've launched Barbie from Mattel, which has seen even better results. So the early signs show that the IP strategy is working for us and should show positive results going forward. So I agree that the last two years have been a lot of, I would say, efforts without measurable results. But we continue to feel optimistic that FY26 will be the year of turnaround for Kiddopia. So I hope that answers your question on that. In terms of your question around the many acquisitions we have done and the growth versus new acquisitions, right? I think if you look,
yeah. Yeah.
So I think if you look at if we zoom out since the time of our IPO, right, which was in March 2021, so it's been four years, if you look at products like Kiddopia, NODWIN Gaming, or many of the other businesses, Sportskeeda, they have actually grown extremely well. Sometimes when you zoom into one or two years of these businesses, they may have plateaued, but if you zoom out, you will see that a CAGR on them still remains very efficient. And we will obviously continue to focus and prioritize organic growth wherever we can.
That said, I think, especially in the gaming space, we are at a moment in time where Nazara is perfectly placed to very aggressively expand globally because we have the brand in place, we have a playbook in place, and we have very, very attractive valuations and opportunities in the global markets due to a multitude of reasons. So I think this time will not present itself to us forever, and therefore we must act on it simultaneously. That's our view.
Okay. And the Curve Games revenue is stagnant for three years. So how do you plan to scale this business?
Curve, I think the business. There were a couple of issues. They bloated up a bit into the run-up of COVID, during the boom of COVID, and then came off in terms of revenues post-COVID, which a lot of gaming businesses have. But a lot of the optimization that was required to be done over there has already been done. So we're buying a business with a strong team. A lot of the cleanup has already happened there. And therefore, we can focus on positive growth going forward, which is why we bought this business. It has good revenues, strong profitability, and very good cash flows. We'll be able to reinvest by its own cash flow in its growth, and we will, of course, continue to support the team.
Sir, one small question. Where do we see depreciation and amortization spent in FY26 and advertising and promotion expenses? Because there has been a significant jump in FY25.
Yeah. See, the thing with amortization is because we are a very acquisitive company, right? We tend to bring on a lot of intangibles onto our books through the acquisitions, which lead to a non-cash amortization, which has been growing, which is why our PAT looks much lower thanks to the amortization that is happening on these acquisitions. You will find that our cash flow is actually much higher than the PAT we report. And even in the current year, I believe close to 75% of our EBITDA has been converted into OCF, pre-tax OCF. So I think we're very focused as a company on our operating cash flow. The EBITDA to cash that we are generating has key North Star metrics for ourselves. In terms of the user acquisition, I would say it's very dependent on what the opportunity with each of our gaming businesses provides us.
If we get a sweet spot where we are able to scale user acquisition and scale the revenues, we will definitely press on the accelerator. So we don't have fixed budgets for it. We're looking for profitable growth. And if we see profitable metrics, we will spend as much as we can.
Thanks for such a nice explanation.
Sorry, did you ask another question?
Yeah, and what's the expenses?
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, we would like to remind participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Ram Anand Chandak, an individual investor. Please proceed.
Hello. I'm Audible.
Yes, sir.
Hello. Yeah. So my question is regarding your AdTech platform. What kind of AdTech platform does Nazara have? Is it open-ended like Meta or Google, or is it a closed-ended platform only for limited customers?
It's open-ended where we have. I think it will be best for me to get Senthil. He's on the call to answer this question in more detail.
Hello. Can you hear me? This is Central.
Yes, Central.
The question broke up a little bit, but I think the question was, do we have an open stack advertising or AdTech platform, or is it closed within?
I think common people access our AdTech platform directly.
Oh, I see. Understood. So yes. So we have a product which is 100% self-serve, right? So anyone who wants can actually go to the platform. It's called Vizibl, V-I-Z-I-B-L .ai. And they can just log in, enter their credentials, and pay as they go, right? So the whole purpose of that stack is to try and democratize AdTech for people who are relatively smaller in size as well. Otherwise, there are some very large minimum thresholds for people to get access to similar products if they were to approach the market at large.
So how is the what is the pricing plan in that platform? How is the pricing decided?
So is the question how is the pricing decided?
Yes, yes, sir.
Okay. So the pricing is essentially a percentage of the budget, right? So essentially, whatever amount is placed on the platform, Datawrkz through our Vizibl platform will essentially retain a percentage of that advertising budget, and the rest of it will go towards the actual media that is being purchased.
Okay. Like later on, Google have a pay-per-click or they have pay-per-view? Do we have like this?
No. Currently, the platform, it essentially allows impressions to be bought. So every time you see an ad, it's an impression. So currently, it allows the impressions to be purchased. It gives algorithms internally which allow you to optimize towards clicks or conversions.
Okay. So do you see any more acquisition further needed to expand our AdTech platform, or are these sufficient what we have at this point?
I think the current intent is to focus on the acquisition that we have, right? Obviously, as with the larger Nazara ecosystem, if there is something that opportunistically we can look at, we might review it. But our current energy is going towards ensuring that we are able to extract synergy from the acquisition that we made last year, which is taking time.
My second question is regarding PokerBaazi. Are there any tax litigation pending on PokerBaazi? And if there is any, what is the current status of that?
Sure. As you know, there has been an ongoing GST litigation on past tax, which I can ask Puneet to talk a bit more in detail.
As of now, there is only the point of the retrospective GST, which is in the court. That's an industry matter which affects the whole gaming industry. And all the gaming companies in India are already in the Supreme Court, and the court is currently hearing that matter. Apart from that, there is no other tax issue which is pending at PokerBaazi's side or I can see on the gaming side.
So I want to know more about PokerBaazi. We have seen Nazara is a global company. We have a well-established market in Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and USA. Is there any opportunity that we could send PokerBaazi into these other markets also, not just India?
Nitish, you want to take that?
Sorry. Can you repeat that? I have not heard it properly.
We have seen earlier our games have been very successful in USA, Europe, Middle East, and North Africa. So do you want to extend PokerBaazi into those markets also? Or do you want to keep PokerBaazi only for the Indian market?
Yeah. Sure. Look, I think right now, PokerBaazi has an amazing opportunity to really grow big in India. And it's very important for the team and all the capital that is being allocated to focus on achieving what is possible in India. That said, PokerBaazi has a fantastic technology platform. It's an in-house technology platform which they are continuously updating. And I believe the product is already very competitive in global markets. So at the appropriate time, the team may consider taking it global. At this point of time, they are focused on the Indian market.
I want to know what is the current regulatory regime regarding real money gaming in other countries outside India. Are other countries friendly for real money gaming, or most of the countries are hostile? What's the current environment?
No. I think different countries have different regulations. A lot of countries are open to skill-based gaming, including the U.S. markets. But yeah, every country has its own specific regulation around skill-based gaming.
So compared to other countries, how do you find Indian regulation? How is our regulatory environment compared to others?
I think I would say, except for at this point of time, the GST taxation issue, right? There is not a national regulation put out around skill-based gaming. There was some talk about it earlier, but it hasn't come through yet.
So my last question is, what kind of companies should we see as the competitors of Nazara? We have seen, right, from 2021, Berkshire Hathaway tried to take control of Activision Blizzard. Though later on, they could not. So should we consider gaming companies as our competitors, or whom should we really treat as our competitors of Nazara?
Look, we have quite a diversified platform, and of course, gaming companies definitely have different IPs, different games, and we would be competitors to them. At the same time, we are more diversified than a standalone gaming company, so I would say it really depends on how you look at it. You can compare us to a Tencent in China. You can compare us to Electronic Arts in the U.S. There could be much smaller companies, much larger companies. I would say we are our own first company from India with our kind of approach.
So if.
Can you move on to the question, please? Because I think there could be others in the queue.
Okay. So if we see Nazara as a holding company, are there competitors like Nazara who have the same business model like us?
Like I said, there are different companies with different platforms, and yeah, it's difficult to compare exactly any company to us, I would say.
Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you for taking my question.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhiram Reddy, an individual investor. Please proceed.
Hi, everyone. I have two questions. One, Poker has been a core growth driver for Moonshine. So what are our plans to expand into other categories and R&D space like Rummy and Fantasy, both at Moonshine level and also at Nazara level? And the second question is.
Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. I'll answer the second question later.
Yes. So I think right now for Moonshine, the biggest focus is on Poker, given their market leadership on that space and the rapid growth that they are experiencing. That said, of course, they will continue to look for all opportunities and do what is the right thing for their business. From a Nazara perspective, given the size of our investment in Moonshine, at this point of time, we are not taking other initiatives ourselves directly on the skill-based R&D space. Like I mentioned earlier, at least in FY26, a lot of our capital allocation and focus is on the core gaming studio business.
Got it. Thank you. And the second question is, what's the current revenue of Smaaash, if you can share that? And what are the plans to make it either EBITDA positive or profitable and also grow the business moving forward?
Yeah. We will probably get control of this business sometime in June. So we'll be in a position to share specific financial numbers maybe next quarter or the quarter after that. But we do see a lot of low-hanging synergy between what we do online as well as offline Smaaash centers. So after we acquired it, the first approach, first plan is to, because it's been in NCLT for two, three years, to get it up to speed and then start driving synergies. For example, we have a large online user base which we can drive offline. We have a lot of partners with large ecosystem players which we can bring offline. So I think we have a lot of ideas, but we will detail it out maybe in the next quarter.
Got it. I'll wait for next quarter for more insights on this. Thank you. Thanks, Nitish.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Nikhil Purwal. Please proceed.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity. My first question is related to NODWIN. So I think earlier in the call, Akshat mentioned that the core business remains profitable. So what is core here? Does it exclude Freaks and NH7?
Yeah. Akshat, let me take that.
Of course. We have NODWIN. We have three core businesses that NODWIN runs. One is the live business. One is the esports business that we have. And the third is the media business that we have. These are the three core engines of NODWIN. But as an example of the Freaks 4U business, when you talked about, Freaks 4U is a company based out of Germany. They go and do Gamescom, which is typically what happens in Cologne in Germany. They also do market entry consulting and agency work. They have an IP called Prime League that they go ahead and run. And so across this, you see that they are spread across three, four verticals, which is there. We like to go ahead and keep the core business going, which is either the festival business, the live business, or the media business, or the esports business.
The other businesses, which are much more agency-centric, are businesses we actively try to optimize for centers of delivery across the world, right? It makes no sense for us to go ahead and have manpower sitting very expensive that is doing just agency business across the world. And those are the optimizations that take time to go ahead and rationalize. Our core businesses remain the three long-term copy creation businesses of media, of esports, and of live events.
Got it. Got it. In the long run, what's the steady state EBITDA margin possible for NODWIN as a consolidated business? And how long will it take for the company to achieve that?
I wish I knew. That's a long-term answer to this question, and I'm not going and just being smart about it and answering this. I'm being very honest. See, I think you have to understand where NODWIN is in its journey. We started off as a nine-year-old company, and we've been able to go ahead and make our name that governments and presidents and prime ministers now invite us to go ahead and build for them. I believe NODWIN will continue to go ahead and grow its top line while defending its profitability on a level for the next two to five years. We don't like losing money, I would suggest. We believe very strong IP steady state on EBITDA is typically, if you look at any sports IPs, they're 20%-25% costs. You have 70%-80% EBITDAs that come from long-term acquisition of IPs.
That's the one that creates value for you. That's the reason which you create value. But it needs typically five to seven years to go ahead and build those out. You're seeing it, right? You're seeing it with when we do BGMS. We are in season four right now, Playground season four. The cost that you would invest typically to go ahead and build IPs would be between two and four years of cash break-even. But then they go ahead and create numerous rewards in the future. The question is, how many can I go ahead and invest in? And obviously, accept the fact that there will be failures as we go ahead and do it because no one's God. And I wish I knew the answer of which IP will work or not. So a very simple answer.
On steady state EBITDAs on a long-term basis, on IPs, we are looking at between 60% and 80% EBITDAs on long-term IPs. On a consolidated basis, because we will keep on running experiments and those would fail, they would go ahead and bring down that EBITDA into more sustainable levels. We do believe on a long-term basis that NODWIN will do anywhere between 30% and 35%.
Got it. You already answered my second question partially. I wanted to actually ask, what kind of investments have gone into building fully-owned IPs like BGMI or even Playground for that matter? And I'm sure that actually some of them have already made money.
The number of things that you see us make money, we actually lose money on a lot that you would not know about. Because we try smaller experiments, right? A INR 20 lakh experiment here, a INR 50 lakh rupees experiment there, an INR 85 lakh rupees experiment there. We all hear about the big ones when we do a Comic-Con and we're doing 11 Comic-Cons. But behind every Comic-Con is at least three or four. But we need to try. Otherwise, there'll never be enough supply for us to go ahead and have these big ones that are successful.
Right. Right. Got it. Got it. My next question is related to publishing. So, Nikhil, probably pardon my ignorance. Can you talk about how does this business work in general? Now, you've acquired Curve Games, and you are also trying to publish a lot of games out of India, take them to the world. But in terms of revenue and etc., how does the business work?
Publishing is basically where you partner with third-party developers or you publish your own games which are first-party games. The focus is how to market the games better, monetize them better, leverage distribution platforms and relations over there to be able to get these games distributed widely. Live ops is another important thing. These games require ongoing updates, support to keep it interesting for the users. I think there's a host of publishing activities that need to be done, which is a value add for the developers who can't usually do it themselves. Publishers also many times fund the development process for the developer. I think that's whether it's on mobile, whether it's on PC console, whether it's in India, whether it's globally, I think that's what the publishing business is about.
In India, we are trying to push the Nazara publishing business because we believe that as an Indian publisher, we can add a lot of value to local developers as well as global developers wanting to promote their games in India effectively. Curve is already established globally in the PC and console space, so they have an existing business that works well. They understand well. We just plan to put a lot more into the funnel.
Got it. And in general, you just acquired Curve Games. Now, how do you look at the return on capital employed in such businesses?
Like I mentioned earlier, I think this business is a high EBITDA margin business. On the current business of 20 million GBP, they're doing maybe 9 or 10 million GBP of EBITDA. But post-CapEx, EBITDA is also pretty good, 4-5 million GBP. There's high free cash flow generating. So I think the business is in a good stage right now. A lot of the cleanup I was talking about, a lot of the optimization has already been done and is behind us before our acquisition. And I think the whole focus right now is on getting the right games and pushing it. The return on capital is already very high in this business.
Okay. My last two questions are related to PokerBaazi. So in this presentation, I see the GGR growth has been higher than the GTV growth. So does that mean the take rate has increased?
Puneet, please answer that.
Yes. The take rate has not increased. As of now, the whole GST hit is something which we are taking, and we are not passing it on to the end user. And you know that post the new GST regime, post October 23, the GST margin is on deposits. That's 28% on deposits. So because of that hit and which we are taking, most of it gets reduced from the gross before it comes to the net.
Right. No, I particularly asked about the current quarter where the gross revenue growth has been higher than the gross transaction value, so how does that usually happen?
So that is because of the smaller stakes tables. Because what we have also seen in the past quarter is that smaller stakes tables and mid-stake tables, traffic has increased. And usually, the percentage of rake, that is the service fee, is slightly higher. And as soon as you go to the higher stake tables, that percentage goes down. So that's the reason why you are seeing that percentage decrease as compared to the GGR.
Perfect. So the blended take rate has increased only for the business.
That's more to do with the traffic, which we get because the users which we acquired on lower and mid-stake tables, that has increased.
Can we move to the next question in line, please? And prior to that, Anukya, can you clarify that one question that was there earlier which was not answered?
Yeah, sure. So the INR 40 crores of purchase of stock and trade is all related to e-pins, which is a digital recharge inventory that NODWIN sells for Google, Steam, Roblox, and Riot Games recharges. I hope that clarifies.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Due to time constraint, that was the last question. I would now like to hand the conference over to the management for the closing comments. Thank you and over to you.
Thank you, everyone, for logging in today. I hope the call was productive for you. Thank you and goodbye.
Thank you. On behalf of ICICI Securities Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect the lines.