Ladies and gentlemen, good day and Welcome to Nazara Technologies Limited Q3 and 9 months FY 2024 Earnings Conference Call hosted by Prabhudas Lilladher Private Limited. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in 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. Jinesh Joshi from Prabhudas Lilladher. Thank you and over to you, sir.
Yeah, good morning everyone. On behalf of Prabhudas Lilladher, I welcome you all to the Q3 and FY 2024 earnings call of Nazara Technologies. We have with us the management represented by Mr. Nitish Mittersain, CEO and JMD, Mr. Rakesh Shah, who's the Group CFO, Mr. Sudhir Kamath, COO, and Anupriya Das, who's the head of corporate development. The majority of the questions today will be taken by Mr. Nitish, Sudhir, and Anupriya. I would now like to hand over the call to the management for opening remarks. Over to you, Nitish, sir.
Hi everyone. Good morning and a very warm welcome to all of you to Nazara Technologies Q3 and 9 months FY 2024 earnings call. On this call, I'm joined by Sudhir Kamath, our Chief Operating Officer; Rakesh Shah, our CFO; Anupriya Sinha Das, our head of corporate development. We have uploaded our results presentation on the exchanges and hope all of you have had an opportunity to go through the same. For this quarter, our revenues totaled at INR 320.4 crores and EBITDA grew by 24% year-on-year to INR 37.7 crores. We saw healthy growth in Animal Jam and Sportskeeda, resulting in our EBITDA increase by 24% year-on-year despite softer revenue growth on an overall basis due to some declines we have seen in our ad tech business as well as our real money gaming business.
Our EBITDA margin increased from 9.7% in Q3 FY 2023 to 11.8% in Q3 FY 2024 as we continue to push for higher margins in our business. Our esports segment witnessed a remarkable 79% EBITDA growth year-on-year. For 9 months FY 2024, we've reported 9% year-on-year increase in revenues to INR 872.1 crores and EBITDA for the same period increased by 20% to reach INR 98.7 crores. Our overall EBITDA margins for the first 9 months have increased by 110 basis points to 11.3% and our PAT has climbed 44% to INR 74.6 crores. Our approach of acquiring global gaming IPs and leveraging focused user acquisition along with data-driven product innovation is starting to pay off for us as demonstrated by Animal Jam's performance in Q3.
When we acquired the WildWorks business, we thought that we could make a good impact on it and with all the hard work that has been put in by our team in the last few quarters, we're actually starting to see the results of the same. Now we're more confident that this playbook can be expanded and scaled up significantly and we will continue to try and replicate this in the coming quarters as well, potentially new game studio acquisitions. We have also completed our FY 2024 fundraising goal. We had set ourselves a target of INR 750 crores. We managed to secure INR 760 crores through a preferential placement to marquee investors like Mr. Nikhil Kamath, SBI Mutual Fund, and ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund. With significant cash reserves today, we are in an excellent position to pursue the exciting acquisition opportunities our team has identified.
They have been working diligently for the last year on putting together many opportunities and we hope to take some of these to their natural conclusion in the coming quarters. Our Nazara publishing division has hit the ground running with its inaugural set of games going live soon. I think as a leading Indian company and also we are very focused on making India and for India, we are supporting a lot of Indian developers through this new initiative and we hope to build a large user network through our Nazara publishing platform. Finally, this March, we are proud to lead the Indian delegation to GDC San Francisco. This is the world's largest gaming conference and we are co-hosting the first-ever India Pavilion, marking a significant milestone for us and the Indian gaming community, which we believe is the time for them to shine.
I would now like to hand over the call to Anupriya, who will give some highlights of performance in this quarter. As I said, we will be happy to answer all your questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Nitish. Good morning everyone. As you're all aware, Nazara operates across three business segments: gaming, e-sports, and ad tech. We continue to be well-diversified across demographics, geography, and business models. Gaming contributed to 36% revenues and 56% EBITDA in the 9 months ending December 2024. During the same period, e-sports contributed to 55% in revenues and 38% in EBITDA, while ad tech contributed the rest. Gaming includes gamified early learning, skill-based real money gaming, premium, and telco subsegments. This segment grew by 7% in 9 months FY 2024. EBITDA grew by 27% year on year in 9 months FY 2024 and was down by 3% in Q3 FY 2024 compared to Q3 FY 2023. The EBITDA margins for this business are 23.6% in 9 months FY 2024 versus 17.3% in 9 months FY 2023 and stood at 16.4% in Q3 FY 2024.
Within gaming, in Kiddopia, the revenues for 9 months stood at INR 168.6 crores compared to INR 162.9 crores in 9 months FY 2023. For the quarter gone by, the revenues stood at INR 54.7 crores versus INR 57.1 crores in Q3 FY 2023. EBITDA for 9 months grew by 77% to INR 44.4 crores from INR 25.2 crores in 9 months FY 2023. EBITDA margin increased substantially to 26.3% from 15.4% in 9 months FY 2023. For Q3 FY 2024, the EBITDA margin increased to 28.2% compared to 11.7% in Q3 FY 2023. Due to an increase in user acquisition costs and lower marketing spend, we experienced a higher rate of subscriber-based decline in this quarter. However, due to control on the CPT, we delivered a higher EBITDA margin of 28.2% in Q3 FY 2024. We made a hard switch between our preferred user acquisition channels in December 2023 to improve performance in the coming quarters.
Telco saw an increase of around 3% year-on-year quarter-on-quarter in Q3 FY 2024. We are working on alternate growth opportunities, for example, IP licensing, which can break through the current user acquisition lockdown. Moving to Animal Jam, Animal Jam delivered its highest quarterly revenue and EBITDA numbers since Nazara acquired it. Revenue and EBITDA for the quarter increased to INR 26.8 crores and INR 6 crores respectively. EBITDA margin for the quarter stood at 22.2%. The growth was driven by a very successful set of in-app events across the quarter, culminating in a Wishing Well event that was very enthusiastically received by our community of young gamers. In addition to ongoing performance marketing, Animal Jam also started experimenting with other user acquisition methods, including a campaign on TikTok with many influencers coinciding with the holiday season.
More broadly, Animal Jam's growth over the year was driven by product development and better UA driven by deeper analytics. The success of Animal Jam gave confidence to us for deploying a similar playbook with other popular global gaming IPs. Moving to World Cricket Championship, revenue for the WCC franchise stood at INR 18 crores with EBITDA of INR 4.3 crores in 9 months FY 2024. The EBITDA margin for the business stood at 22.7%. As we shared in Q2, Nextwave is reinventing the WCC franchise to position it for growth and help it break out of its current scale. The initial set of actions have been taken over Q2 and Q3, including a revamp of Nextwave's ad monetization, live ops, brand sales, and user acquisition operations. Product-related changes will continue through Q4.
This includes changes to the existing games, WCC 2 and WCC 3, as well as a new game to be launched in Q1 FY 2025. Moving to OpenPlay, this segment's revenue and EBITDA stood at INR 32.9 crores and INR 0.8 crores respectively, 9 months FY 2024 compared to INR 43.6 crores and INR 8.5 crores in 9 months FY 2023 respectively. In July 2023, a 28% tax on entry fees for skill-based real money gaming was implemented, effective from 1st October 2023. The impact of increased GST costs has largely been absorbed by all industry players, including Classic Rummy, while player deposits are inclusive of 28% GST paid to the government. The player still gets the full amount via a loyalty promotion bonus, which can be used in the game. Post-GST implementation, Classic Rummy recorded an EBITDA loss in Q3 FY 2024.
While gross revenue before netting loyalty promotion bonus is steady, that is, player activity has not reduced. However, net revenue is lower due to higher loyalty promotion expense. The added GST cost led to an EBITDA loss in Q3 FY 2024. Clear GST policy guidance. Nazara actively seeks consolidation opportunities in the sector. Our e-sports segment grew by 24% year-over-year in 9 months FY 2024 and 27% year-over-year in Q3 FY 2024, while EBITDA grew much faster by 44% in 9 months FY 2024 and 79% in Q3 FY 2024. Moving to NODWIN, the revenue for the quarter increased by 20% to INR 133.9 and grew by 17% year-over-year in 9 months FY 2024 to INR 327.9. EBITDA was at negative INR 5.8 crores in 9 months FY 2024 and negative INR 2.2 crores in Q3 FY 2024. These numbers include PublishMe, which was acquired by NODWIN in October 2023.
The EBITDA loss during Q3 FY 2024 is attributed to the gaming accessory business BrandScale Innovations, which houses the Wings brand. To support upcoming product launches and expand into new markets, including laptops, BrandScale requires a substantial injection of fresh capital for marketing and branding efforts. NODWIN has chosen to forgo further investment and relinquish control, enabling BrandScale to seek growth capital from new investors. NODWIN shareholding remains unchanged, but BrandScale will be treated as an associate in the consolidated financial reporting from February 3rd, 2024. Mass media rights have been pushed out owing to consolidation in the media, TV, and OTT industries. However, NODWIN has been able to secure independent media rights for individual property. Each of these independent media rights are higher than previous years.
Revenue per partner has increased from INR 1.63 crores per revenue partner in 9 months FY 2023 to 2.71 crores per revenue partner in 9 months FY 2024. I would also like to highlight the recent acquisitions made by NODWIN, which are propelling the expansion of product offering and market presence. In October 2023, NODWIN acquired 100% stake in gaming marketing agency PublishMe for a sum of $2 million from its existing shareholder, Nazara and Ozgur. This acquisition will provide the essential tailwinds for NODWIN Gaming to drive its mission of leading the emerging market media landscape. In December 2023, NODWIN invested INR 33 crores in Freaks 4U Gaming, a marketing services company for gaming and e-sports, delivering its services across the world, especially in the PC games and developed market.
In January 2024, NODWIN Gaming has announced acquisition of 100% stake in Comic Con India through a cash and stock deal valued at INR 55 crores. With this buyout, NODWIN not only looks to diversify its youth portfolio but to also expand presence in its global entertainment space. NODWIN remains committed to its vision of becoming one of the top three esports companies globally. The growth trajectory will be sustained through both organic expansion and strategic M&A aimed at enhancing capabilities in emerging and developed markets. Kiddopia continues to have a stellar performance. We have reported a robust year-on-year revenue growth of 57% to INR 147 crores in 9 months FY 2024 and 68% in Q3 FY 2024 to INR 59.8 crores.
EBITDA for the business improved to INR 51.8 crores in 9 months FY 2023, a growth of 67% year-on-year, whereas for Q3 FY 2024, it increased to 26.7 crores, which is a growth of 97% year-on-year. EBITDA margins for the business improved to 35.2% in 9 months FY 2024 from 33% in 9 months FY 2023. While Sportskeeda continued to grow its revenue and EBITDA, in Q3 FY 2024, its subsidiary Pro Football Network, a business we acquired in March 2023, also reported a healthy margin bolstered by the ongoing NFL season. Both Sportskeeda and PFN continue to grow in the U.S. sports media market, where Sportskeeda is ranked number six in the sports domain in the U.S. and PFN is ranked number three in the American football domain in the U.S. in December 2023 as per Similarweb. Moving to ad tech, our third segment.
Over the past year, we have shifted focus from low-margin work to securing high-margin business clients. This strategic pivot resulted in a year-on-year revenue drop to INR 76.3 crores in 9 months FY 2024 from INR 114.2 in 9 months FY 2023. Despite this, our gross margin percentage saw a significant increase from 19%-27%, indicating the effectiveness of our strategy. Although our gross margins have improved, Datawrkz EBITDA fell to INR 6.6 crores in 9 months FY 2024 from INR 10.8 in 9 months FY 2023. This decrease reflects our heightened investment in sales and marketing, including team overheads and promotional events. These investments, particularly during Q3 FY 2024, have significantly enhanced our sales pipeline, leading to improved conversion rate and establishment of crucial partnerships. With this, I will close my remark here, and I'd like to open the call for Q&A.
I request Nitish, Sudhir, and Rakesh to join me for the Q&A.
Thank you, Anupriya, for that. I'm going to actually ask our Chief Operating Officer, Sudhir Kamath, and Anupriya to step up to answer the questions today, but I'm also going to jump in where required. Let's get started.
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 handset 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 Nitin Jain from Fairtree Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity, and congratulations on the good execution in esports and Animal Jam. So I wanted to dwell a bit on the Kiddopia business. So despite all your efforts, the subscriber growth, it's not picking up as expected. So what do you think would be the reason behind that? Is it the product, or is it the cohort that we are addressing in terms of their propensity to spend? Or let me put it this way: are there any learnings from Animal Jam that we could replicate here?
Sure. Sudhir, let me take this one. So I think for Kiddopia, the challenge is not at all on the product or the consumer behavior or the penetration of the market. I think it's a very simple challenge of being able to acquire users effectively at the cost that we are willing to pay. So I think that is where the challenge we have faced. This year, we have tried a lot with the main ad tech we're dealing with. But seeing the Q3 numbers also, we've not been able to achieve success. Two things we are doing. We are moving or we've actually moved as of December into some other ad networks, which we are hopeful will be more effective for us. And the team is working on that. But I think we also need to move beyond linear user acquisition into other ways of acquiring users.
One thing we are quite excited about is licensing popular IP. So today, if you see Kiddopia or Animal Jam, both these games are 100% original IP games. But we have seen that many companies in this space, in the kids' space globally, are doing much better when they are licensing popular IP of well-known characters from companies like a Hasbro or a Mattel or a Disney. And a lot of these companies we have spoken to, and they are very keen to work with us because our quality of product is well proven. So we are hoping to execute some of these opportunities in the coming one or two quarters that will allow us to boost user acquisition through organic means and not just through paid UA. So I think that could be a potential game changer for us, which we are very actively working on. Yeah.
I hope that answers your question.
Yeah. That's good. Just to continue on the Kiddopia bit, there was a plan to roll it out to other geographies. What would be the status of that project?
We have, at this point of time, continued to focus a lot on getting the core business stable. Look, I think the North American market has capacity for a user base to double. We need to get that right before we focus sales spread. We do have experiments running in markets like Japan. We have seen some success. But we really haven't doubled down when we want to solve the core problem.
Okay. Thank you. And all the best.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants: you may press star and one to ask questions. Next question is from the line of Manan Poladia from MKP Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi. Good morning. Am I audible?
Yes, Ma'am.
Yes. First of all, good execution on postponing as Anna said. Firstly, my question is also on the Kiddopia bit. I just wanted to understand this blip that we're seeing in terms of subscriber degrowth, etc. And I understand you've made a hard shift from an acquiring platform. Can you give me some color on why the churn has happened? I understand the new user acquisition being an issue, but the churn rate, I'm not really sure. So what's the situation there?
Yeah. I'll take it. I'll take it. So what happens is that when our spends are running well, we acquire new users, but when existing users who have elapsed also get reactivated. So when you see a churn number, you see a net churn number, which includes activation and reactivation. Because our overall spends in this quarter have gone down significantly, the reactivation also dropped, which is why you were seeing a little higher net.
Correct. I understand that. My second question is on the Wings acquisition that we made a while back. Last quarter, also, I had spoken to Anna last year about the purchase of stock-in-trade line items. We'd purchased some, I think, INR 64 crores-INR 65 crores' worth of equipment for the Wings platform. We were supposed to sell it in the festive season, etc. Can you give us an update about the performance or how that went?
Yeah. No. It has for a little season, and our stock has come down. I think the larger picture of the Wings is, I didn't hear comment earlier.
Isa, sorry to interrupt. We're not able to hear you.
Sorry. Can you hear me now?
Yes, sir.
Okay. I'll just repeat my answer. So the Diwali was reasonable for us, and our inventory levels have come down. But it took a consolidated Wings. And I'm going to say one is they have seen a lot of opportunity and initial success in areas such as laptops, laptops, and what we call audio. And we just felt that it was going a bit too away from where the core business is.
Nitish, sir, we are still not able to hear you.
Nitish, Sudhir, let me just step in on this one. Manan, I just want to say that again. I'm not sure if you heard Nitish clearly. The Wings are two things. I think one is your question was around inventory. Inventory levels have come down over the festive season. Overall, it's been fairly well for them, and especially laptops as a category, which they had launched, went very well. However, for us, the bigger question was being seen just directionally. I think the growth for them is in the segments which are away from the core esports piece that we had entered. So laptops, for example, is not really connected to the esports users. It's more of a generalist use case.
I think that's probably what we've also seen in an announcement just about 2 or 3 days back where Nodwin has decided not to take up its option to take majority control of that business.
Does that answer the question?
Yeah. Yeah. I think it does. Thank you for answering that question. My last question is with regards to the Sportskeeda and Nodwin numbers. From what I understand, this was a seasonally strong quarter, especially for Nodwin, as well as Sportskeeda due to the PFN thing. I just wanted to understand how should we look at numbers going forward? Is this something that would seasonally be weak and strong, or from here, do we see bluer skies going forward?
I think, in general, if you look at the last two quarters as well, Sportskeeda has consistently done well in all the quarters, and we expect this to very much continue. That said, there is seasonality in the business. Q4 might be lower than we've seen, but Q4 will definitely be much better than Q4 of the previous year. Growth is definitely there. For NODWIN as well, I think the long-term trend is clearly high growth and continues to be, and this quarter was one more of them.
Right. Understood. Thank you. Thank you so much, guys, for answering my questions. Bye-bye.
Thanks.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants: you may press star and one to ask questions. Next question is from the line of Raj Joshi from Ace Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir, for the opportunity. Sir, I have a couple of questions. Our ad tech business is still facing challenges. How do we look at growing this business?
Thanks for that question, Raj. I think, as we have said in the previous call as well, we see this business as leading a more fundamental shift away from some of their low-margin businesses which were there earlier towards slightly higher-margin businesses on the services side as well as in some of their product businesses. That switch takes time. It's a fundamental reset of the DNA of the company, the organization structure, etc. So what you would have seen in the last quarter as well as in this quarter is there's an overall revenue degrowth, but most of that degrowth is from the lower-margin businesses which we are moving away from. So at the gross contribution level, the percentages have improved quite dramatically on a quarter-on-quarter basis, gross margin has gone up from 20%-31%.
That said, post-gross margin, we then look at the investment that we make into the marketing team and the marketing events. And that has resulted in the, I mean, that is what we expect to actually drive the growth of this business in the coming quarters, right? And we think we're on track with that plan, and the team there is executing on the plan that we've elected.
Okay. Another question is: how do you look at the organic growth of Group for FY 2025?
For the Ad Tech business or for Nazara?
For both.
Okay. So on the ad tech business side as well, we'll just have to back this. So I think a lot of the investment which has gone in this year around the marketing team and the events there has started delivering in terms of new client wins. And that to us is a great positive sign for significant I mean, this year was not good for ad tech, as you saw, but next year, we do expect significant growth on that business. A small reminder also on the product business: that has started delivering good results. It's still early days for that business, but the initial set of clients has started increasing, and there's high stickiness of those clients. So all that has been quite positive. Obviously, it's not very positive for the coming year.
Overall, at Nazara as well, I think organic growth will be strong across the board is what we've seen. That said, as Nitish also said in his opening remarks, we are sitting on a lot of capital which will be deployed towards M&A. So we do expect both organic and inorganic growth engines to fire in the coming year.
Thank you, sir. That's it from my end.
Thanks, Raj.
Thank you. Next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. hope I'm Audible.
Yes. Yes, Paul.
Yeah. Just I have a few questions. Firstly, on Animal Jam, since we have seen improving growth out here, what is the right benchmark given where you are at the stage in terms of monetizing it? Can we see 15%-20% kind of a growth potential here on, or we still would have to monitor in a non-seasonal quarter to understand what kind of growth it can?
Right. So yeah. So that's first, and we'll take other questions subsequently. So I think, while on Animal Jam, a lot of the effort in the last year was around fixing the processes and the structure of how they were doing analytics, how they were doing user acquisition, what hopes were there for monetizing players. A lot of those things are in place. And in December, they delivered one of the best-ever events in the game, which is called Wishing Well Now, all of these basics are now in place. I think they're beginning to see good scale-up now in terms of user base outcome of monetization. We do expect that before this, you said 10%-15% growth. I think that kind of growth should be deliverable for all the quarters on a year-on-year basis.
We would like to wait for maybe one more quarter to see how it performs in a non-seasonally high quarter as well, and then give you a bit more confidence on that. Directionally, I think we are there now.
Got it. And on the NODWIN business, we have mentioned on this BrandScale side where we basically would—is it safe to assume that we would see improvement in an EBITDA margin starting Q4 since that could not be consolidated? And what will be the stake for us over time? As you have also highlighted, they may be raising more money in that. Will we be retaining our stake, or may I also see dilution over time?
Thanks. Let me add just one more. So one is, I think, just in terms of the impact on EBITDA, I think it definitely will be positive. It will be positive. And starting from Q2, it's going to be doing that as we announced last week. We've not broken out the exact numbers for revenue and EBITDA at this point, so can't share that detail. But it definitely will be a positive impact on profitability from that economy. I'm sorry. Could you repeat the second question, Ma'am?
Yeah. So second part was that we have mentioned that the reason we have done this is they have some different plans now or expanded plans, and they may need more capital, which would mean that we may get diluted over time, or we would also participate in subsequent rounds out there.
So I think those calls we will take as a minute. I think the call we have taken is that we are not retaining the right to majority or the right to appoint the majority of the directors last week. So that right, we have given up. NODWIN is currently at about 40% of the stake. So it becomes an associate for us. We can let it dilute as well, but we could continue to invest as well. So I think options are open. It depends upon sort of the direction the company takes, how much capital it needs, which other investments investors are taking for that.
Got it. Got it. And on the real money gaming business, what is the right roadmap to look at in this business here on? And also, any inputs you could share on the potential risk from GST liabilities that we saw, at least on the media, for some of our peers? So what is the status for us and potential out there?
Sure. Rahul, I'll step in. I'll step in here to answer. Is my voice clear?
Yes, I can hear you, Nitish.
Yeah. Okay. So I think two aspects on the RMG side. One, we are stabilizing our own business, and we've seen some positive traction there, but we need another quarter to get that done. In terms of M&A, we are talking to a few people and seeing what are the opportunities for us to look forward to potentially consolidate in the market. And third, in terms of GST liabilities, as you know, the industry, it's been a large industry issue where there have been notices sent for INR tens of thousands of crores to the RMG companies. We have two RMG companies, OpenPlay and Halaplay. We did get summons for both of them, and we have supplied relevant information. If there's any further development, we will share with the market at the appropriate time.
But of course, it's important to remember that the scale of our business in RMG is much smaller than many of the people who are sitting on very large games. Overall, we think, hopefully, over a period of this year, we are quite hopeful that this retrospective investigation will follow up, or the courts will take a right view over there. But that's the current status.
Got it. Got it. One question on the telco business: we have seen some increase in losses here. Is it pertaining to some increase in corporate-level expenses, or it's more to do with the initiative towards Nazara Publishing?
Yeah. It's not specific to the telco business itself, but some of the expenses are grouped within that. I think it's more one of the expenses that you are seeing showing some losses there.
Got it. Got it. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you, Rahul.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants: you may press star and one to ask questions. Next question is from the line of Rohit Mehra from SK Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for the opportunity. The first question from my side is that the Q3 for Nazara is expected to be better in terms of quarter and number of events as well. Sorry. And what has led to the lower growth in media and revenue and content views?
So I think the first point is, as everyone knows, that BGMI is now back, and Telco Gameplay, etc., have started improving. We have expected media also to increase at the revenue track as well. However, I think there is a lot of churn, as you know, in the overall media sector as well with the and the potential Sony sorry, Star, etc., dealings which are going. So I think what we've seen is that there's a little bit of a reluctance to look at very large-scale across the board kind of media deals. What NODWIN has therefore focused on this quarter is more individuals, small monies for properties. And both have been happening, and both have been at better terms than previous years. But that bigger kind of BDR transaction is not yet happening. We do expect that in the next two quarters but something.
Okay. Perfect. And my next question is: as we have the good cash in hand, how do you look at deploying this cash, and which areas will you be focusing on?
So I think we have a very clearly laid out M&A strategy, which is to look at businesses which have growth potential which also will where we see clear cash flow and growth both. We are looking at businesses across all three of our segments. So you already would have seen some announcements coming in from NODWIN over the last few days. And on both gaming as well as ad tech, there are multiple opportunities that our team has been looking at over the last few months. And as Nitish said, we do hope to get them to the logical conclusion in the coming quarters. But the pipeline is very good at this point, I would say.
Okay. Okay. How should we look at the growth in WCC over the longer term because it has been a fairly narrow range? Obviously, the monetization has not been that positive as of now. Can you share some views?
I think on WCC as well, I mean, there is a historic business around WCC2 and WCC3, the game market continuation. Both have been kind of value-centric. I think the longer-term plan for us is to do kind of a significant reset of those games as well as new games that get launched by the studio. The last couple of quarters and probably this quarter as well are more around those product development changes. We do expect next year to be a significant growth game, but I think we'll be able to better position to look at that in Q1 or Q2 of next year once we actually have results about our expectations.
Okay. That's perfect. That answers my question. And that's it from my side. Thank you, and all the best.
Thanks, Rohit.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants: you may press star and one to ask questions. Next question is from the line of Manan Poladia from MKP Securities. Please go ahead.
Hello. Hi. Am I audible? Hello.
Yes, Paul.
Yeah. So my first question is on the NODWIN side. I'm not sure if we used to earlier, but if I could please have the breakup for the content views quarter by quarter for this year.
Hello. Sorry, I don't have a number offhand, but maybe we can get it to you after the call. We do have it broken out in each of our quarterly presentations. You can just look back through those as well.
Okay. I'll look that up afterwards. My second question is with regards to there is a statement that you put on that slide on Slide number 26 where you said that large media brand deals have been postponed because of the consolidation in TV and OTT. And the revenue also is, I think, 9-month revenue, some INR 50 crores versus INR 68 for year-on-year. If you could just explain how we should see that going forward in the next six to nine months with respect to the last deals that you've spoken about.
Yes. So I think in the previous years, there was a larger deal, for example, with RTE, which was not specific to one event but also pulled in content from across different TV sports events and packaged it and put it together. So those kinds of deals have not yet started happening again. So far, we're still looking at more deals which are individual events and their media rights. We expect that to go back to larger deals in the coming quarters, but I mean, we can't say with certainty whether it will happen in this quarter or next quarter.
Yeah. It's fair enough. I understand that. And as far as IPs go, we are pushing, from what I understand, more IPs this year than we did past year, right?
Absolutely. Yes.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you.
So if I can just add there, right, that sequentially, what we have seen is the revenue from a particular IP has been growing. So if you see especially the revenue per partner, which is an indicator for all media rights and brand sponsorship partners, the revenue per partner has steadily increased. So that is a good positive from our side.
Yeah. So since you said that, just one small follow-up. I just wanted to understand what sort of traction are we seeing on the sponsor and the media? Is there a little bit more excitement about eSports, per se, or is there more interest in partnering with you guys to do either IPs or to sponsor your IPs?
We continue to see increased interest. An indication from that, again, like I mentioned, about revenue per partner is increasing. While we don't share an IP-wise trajectory, we have seen a sequential increase.
Right. And just one last question. There's been a few competitors that have come up to NODWIN specifically, like Skyesports or somebody else, the Villager Esports, etc. And they have been taking some smaller IPs from the publisher that is invested in us, which is KRAFTON, right? And they've still been getting some of the smaller IPs that are publisher-backed. I'm just curious what the industry structure should look like and how we should think about it. Are we going to get most of the bigger IPs, and the smaller IPs will keep on going to these smaller players?
So do you want to take it, or should I take it?
No, no. Go ahead.
Well, so at NODWIN, our effort is to create IPs across the levels, right? So grassroots, national, international. That gives people that opportunity to create heroes and become larger international stars while creating those grassroots-level IPs. And the effort will be on that trajectory. And historically, we've also done that. In terms of the mix of revenue, the white label and other IPs white label predominantly IPs provide us that good margin support. But at the same time, our effort goes on increasing our own IPs in that sense, which gives us non-linearity in revenues in EBITDA to come. So the effort will be on both sides, building the grassroots-level IPs to proliferate esports in the country and at the same time grow international IPs as well.
Right. I understand that. Thank you. Thank you, Anupriya. Thank you, Sudhir. Bye-bye.
Ma'am, sorry if I may just add a little here. I know this question was over, but I think there's a bunch of IPs like College Rivals, there's Glass, in the works, Snapdragon Pro Series, Steel Axe, and NH7 Weekender. I think many of these are the bigger IPs in this space. We continue to focus on those growths as well as adding on new IPs. We also saw the announcement around Comic Con India, which is, again, a very well-loved kind of property. I'm sure with NODWIN coming into the picture there, that will also grow for them. We expected to focus on some of these larger stories as well.
We continue to be the market leader by a disproportionate basis in India and other markets.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants: you may press star and one to ask questions. Next question is from the line of Raj Joshi from Ace Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you, sir, again, for the opportunity. Sir, I would like to understand what is the scaling opportunity of the recent acquisition done by NODWIN?
So I think each of the properties that you would have seen in the recent past have a lot of potential. In NODWIN, their focus there is on taking well-loved IPs and then growing them further. So if I take a slightly broader view over the last year, right, so starting with the Singapore one which was Branded, which actually has started showing growth already. There's been PublishMe which covers characters from the Middle East. There is Comic Con which happened this year, the Freaks 4U which is more Western-facing and also gets into PC gaming. Now, all of these kind of bring different growth levers for us. They all have strong legacy for many years. They all have strong customer love if you will.
And I think what NODWIN will be able to do is to grow, leverage these in other markets or, for example, bringing in branding partners or customers who may be present in one geography and are looking for other geographies. And they can actually leverage them with other properties in those geographies as well as capabilities. So it is a fairly strong growth play that NODWIN is making here and will continue to do so.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you. A reminder to participants: you may press star and one to ask questions. Next question is from the line of Jinesh Joshi. Please go ahead.
Yeah. I have a question. On our Classic Rummy business, I think we absorbed the GST impact in this quarter, and hence, our EBITDA wasn't in the negative territory. Now, if I remember right, in the last earnings call, we had mentioned that perhaps we may be able to achieve a break-even in 4Q. But my question is, I mean, despite absorbing the GST impact, we have seen the revenues fall by about more than 50%. So if we are planning to achieve a break-even in the next quarter, do we plan to pass on the GST impact? And in that case, what would be the consequent impact on revenue? And also a related question is that we are seeking consolidation opportunities in this sector, although the policy guidelines are quite clear right now.
Given the impact on revenue and profitability which we are seeing, I mean, what exactly are we looking out in terms of big opportunities in this space is what I want to understand?
Sure. I'm going to take that answer, Sudhir. This is Nitish. So two things. I think one is very important to understand that the actual business of Classic Rummy hasn't fallen in this quarter while the revenues presented showed a significant drop. And the reason for that is consumers have continued because our GST is completely absorbed by us, consumers have continued to play in the way they were playing earlier. And therefore, we haven't seen any significant drop in consumer traction. The amount of money being played with, etc., is the same. The reason the revenues are lower is because we have issued bonus to the consumers to offset the GST cost. And as per the accounting standards, we are now deducting the bonus from the revenues to display net revenues.
I think that's why you're seeing a larger fall in the revenues versus the actual business in itself. Hopefully, that will stabilize over a period of time. We can reduce these bonuses that we are issuing as a market also evolves, right? Because it's a competitive thing. We need to see what our competitors are doing, etc. But we expect that to start normalizing in the quarters to come. In terms of consolidation, we are looking actively at what are the opportunities. I think one thing we need to look at is about these retrospective liabilities that these companies are carrying. In any consolidation move, how do we ensure that they do not get carried over to our company? We have lawyers looking at all these aspects. In due course, we will take some action if it's appropriate for us.
Sure, sir. My second question is on the media rights business. I understand we have stated that there was some deferment in deals. But can you share which all OTT partners are we currently negotiating with, and what kind of escalation can be seen the next year, at least in terms of media rights to be?
Yeah. I'll answer that again. I think we don't want to disclose specific partners at this point of time because it is competitive information, and we don't want to share it with the competition. But we do see a lot of interest. The team has been building a strong pipeline. And especially on some of our exclusive IP like Playground, you will soon see Amazon, for example, did season 1, season 2. We'll be making an announcement around that for season 3 very soon where the rights are going to be, again, sold at a premium. So I think the trajectory is in the right direction.
Sure, sir. One last clarification required. I think we have mentioned that we will not invest more in BrandScale, but our shareholding will remain unchanged. And we will treat it as an associate, and consolidation will not happen. So the question is, I mean, if the shareholding is unchanged, why is the accounting changing?
Basically, today, we had an option at our discretion to increase our stake to majority, right? Because we took a view that we do not want to invest more, we waived that option so that the company can raise money from external investors. Because we have waived the option to increase our holding in the company, we have lost the rights to consolidate the business as per India's accounting standards.
Got that, sir. Pretty clear from my side. Thank you very much and all the best.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants: you may press star and one to ask questions. As there are no further questions, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Sudhir Kamath for closing comments.
Thanks to everyone for the questions. Thanks especially to Jinesh and his team at Prabhudas Lilladher for hosting this. Just to summarize, I think. The quarter. I think we've created a very robust platform for future growth. So we're quite optimistic that we'll be able to deliver good results in the coming quarters. And we are on course to continue with a profitable growth trajectory. We remain steadfast in our commitment to make Nazara play a very substantial part in India's quest to become a global gaming powerhouse. Thank you, everyone. Thanks for the time. And look forward to having further interactions in the coming days and coming quarters. In case of any further queries, please do get in touch with us or with STH, our investor relations advisor. Thanks and all the best as well.
Thank you. On behalf of Prabhudas Lilladher Private Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.