Nazara Technologies Ltd

NSE:NAZARA

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q4

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to Q4 FY '22 Earnings Conference Call of Nazara Technologies Limited hosted by Prabhudas Lilladher Private Limited. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Jinesh Joshi from Prabhudas Lilladher Private Limited. Thank you, and over to you, Mr. Joshi.

[Jinesh Joshi, analyst]

Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. On behalf of Prabhudas Lilladher, I welcome you all to the 4Q FY '22 Earnings Call of Nazara Technologies. We have the management represented by Mr. Nitish Mittersain, JMD; Mr. Manish Agrawal, our Group CEO; and Mr. Rakesh Shah, Group CFO. I would now like to hand over the call to the management for opening remarks. Thank you, and over to you, sir.

[Nitish Mittersain, executive]

Good morning, everyone. This is Nitish Mittersain. Welcome to all of you for Nazara Technologies Q4 and FY '22 Earnings Call. We have uploaded our results presentation on the exchanges, and I hope everybody has had an opportunity to go through the same.

Nazara has already established itself as a leader in the Indian gaming industry, and it is now strategically positioned to capitalize on the tailwinds in our industry. Despite challenges caused by changes in Apple policies, regulatory disturbance in real money gaming and the negative impact of COVID-19 in live eSports events, Nazara has still delivered a strong performance in FY '22. This is a great demonstration of our diversified platform strategy that allows us to continue to grow and remain resilient to any temporary headwinds in a particular segment of our business.

In FY '22, we generated revenues of INR 6.21 billion, up 37% year-on-year. EBITDA of INR 946 million, up 109% year-on-year. And the PAT of INR 507 million, up 273% year-on-year. We are glad to report that all of our business segments are profitable, and we have added significant cash balances, which now totally amount to INR 7.3 billion as of March end.

The company remains free of debt. The above has been achieved without incurring any significant [indiscernible] losses and all our companies are driving growth along with profitability. However, it is important to understand that in the pace of growth we have, growth and market leadership far outweighs near-term margin optimization. And we are very clear that we will continue with the strategy of prioritizing growth over margins into FY '23 while remaining profitable and cash flow generative in every segment of our business.

In FY '22, we have added many new friends to our Friends of Nazara network. These include Publishme, Datawrkz, OpenPlay, the event IP from OML including NH7 Weekender and most recently, WINGS gaming accessories. We have also made successful investments in Rusk Media with whom we are launching a unique gaming entertainment show called Playground as well as investments made in global gaming funds, Griffin Gaming Partners and Big Crafts, through which we intend to drive multipronged collaboration.

Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that Nazara has a 22-year track record of creating value for its shareholders who have believed in our vision of making India a world gaming powerhouse. We have been through many cycles right from 2000 onwards, and our DNA is well adapted to make us anti-fragile in such times. As a gesture of our appreciation towards the shareholders' faith in us and to commemorate our first anniversary as a publicly-traded business, we are pleased to announce a bonus issue in the ratio of 1 bonus share for every 1 equity share held.

Now I would like to request Manish to walk through the financial highlights. Thank you very much.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Thanks, Nitish. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Nazara's quarter 4 and full year call, and look forward to interacting with you in the Q&A.

I will quickly summarize the information, which is also uploaded in the presentation we have uploaded on our site. As Nitish has also kind of given you a flavor of the numbers, in the full year, we delivered INR 621.7 crores or a growth of 37%. We delivered INR 946 million in EBITDA, 109% up and we delivered INR 507 million impact, which is 273% up.

So the resiliency of our portfolio, the momentum which we have seen in gaming makes us very, very happy to say that this is a guidance which we had given in September end to all of you saying that we will grow roughly 35%, 40% in revenue and 12% to 15% EBITDA margins. And we are happy to report that we have exceeded and met those kind of guidances, which we gave you in September.

Now as you are all aware that we had a few headwinds. We had a headwind of Apple Gaming's policy in April 2021, which impacted our gamified segment growth. We had on and off COVID-19 continuing to really impact the off-line events, which has a negative impact on our [indiscernible] revenues from brand sponsorships of live events and also kind of accelerate the penetration of esports. And then it also has a negative impact on Sportskeeda as well as Next Play, which really get a bump up when there is a lot of sporting events happen in the country. So in spite of that, we have been able to take all of this aside and deliver numbers, which we had kind of projected and guided to all of you.

We are also happy that we just not really kind of looked at what is the growth revenue growth, but we are also -- all our businesses are cash generative, profitable. And as of 31st March 2022, we have INR 7,231 million of cash across the group. And that's what we are really kind of -- while the current portfolio has its own momentum and it's growing, we believe that the flywheel of M&A will now also start at corporate as in subsidiaries as you have seen with Nodwin last year. And with the cash being activated in most of the subsidiaries, we are looking at how to deploy that cash to drive organic and inorganic growth.

I'll quickly kind of take you through segments. Esports has become our largest segment. It contributes 49% of our revenues. Over the last 3 years, this segment has delivered a 90% CAGR. We've not been growing over 65% in esports [indiscernible] over 130%. If you look at the full year performance, the segment has grown 79%. And it has not just grown in revenues, but has also grown in your absolute EBITDA numbers by 43%.

As Nitish highlighted, this is a segment which is very important for us to build. We are the market leader here. We need to constantly keep building the ecosystem, keep investing in the ecosystem, whether it's IPs around events, IPs around content, IPs around talent and forging new partnerships. Here, our objective is to continue to have this high growth momentum. And not just really at this juncture, start looking at EBITDA maximization. And that is very important to note because esports, our conviction has been very, very strong always, and we believe that esports will be the biggest viewed sports entertainment format in the next 5 to 7, 10 years, and we don't want to be really kind of losing that amazing and massive opportunity in India, South Asia and other emerging markets as you really look at.

We have seen how the esports leadership is growing in the ecosystem. The data point is that DGMI launch, [indiscernible] mobile India launch was concurrent [indiscernible] as well as the first match of IPL, which kind of underlines the conviction we have on the esports viewership in coming years, that is going to be really, really important. And hence, building those IPs and investing on IP across India and other emerging markets is very important for us.

We believe that with economy opening up, off-line events opening up, cinema, malls, restaurants, everything opening up, offline events are going to be a reality, keeping fingers crossed. And with that, we believe that our IPs like India [indiscernible] has [indiscernible] using [indiscernible], all of those IPs will see light of the day this year. And those are all kind of long-term properties with sustained brands and arises backing them, we see then a very healthy upside coming to the business in this year.

Now this segment, as all of you know, is broadly driven by 2 companies with Nodwin and Sportskeeda. Nodwin continues to really remain a very stellar growth, delivered INR 208 million in FY '22, which is a 55% increase. We delivered an EBITDA of INR 157 million, 29%. And if you look at from the business upside, as I mentioned, this coming year, we see a very, very clear strong business upside coming from the offline events, which will add INR 70 crores, INR 80 crores to the Nodwin revenue number this year.

Our media revenues are increased by 84% in quarter 4, and it accounts for 20% of the overall business. We are also kind of embarking on building a D2C strategy where we have done acquisitions of merchandising company, Planet Superheroes, gaming accessory company in WINGS. And we have also our selling of [indiscernible] business is doing great. Combination of that, we believe we can really unlock the community, which comes to Nodwin in terms of participation of the commitments, in terms of viewership to really create a very robust gaming D2C business, which is kind of opportunities begging for itself in a country like India with the growth of overall gamers as well as hard core and mid-core gamers.

We also kind of created amazing partnership this year with Gameloft for esports centers with FIFA for EISL. And we have also increased our partners from 27 to 103, which clearly the market demonstrates the excitement around in the ecosystem comprising of brands or platforms, publishers all around esports. And everybody wants to kind of really work and talk to us on how they can really reach to this community through esports.

We are -- our -- Sportskeeda is the other one. Sportskeeda delivered INR 792 million, 130% growth with a 64% increase in EBITDA, delivering INR 274 million. So these are the numbers, but the story really behind these numbers is amazing. A company from India is now really kind of in the top 10 sports site in U.S. as per Comscore. We are #7. We used to be 17 a year back. And that's what we are inching up. We are seeing some amazing traction in terms of users across U.S. sports. We are seeing traction of monetizing them to programmatic. And we are also really looking at our esports business contributing 20%, 25% of the overall [indiscernible] for the esports. And the other by far the largest esports site in India by any stretch of parameters which you can think of.

If you look at our growth, it's on a very, very solid ticket. The growth has really happened from additional content, high-quality content, which allows you to get more index. So social content, sharing happens which has delivered an increase in amounts of 13%. We are also going to increase more U.S.-based sports. We are also going to really increase video-based formats. And overall, this business has a very, very strong momentum. And the combination of NODWIN and Sportskeeda really puts us in a very good position in esports business, not just in India but globally. And it's a company to dominate leadership.

A small line about Publishme, we acquired that in September. We are now happy to note that we have created a very, very strong team in Middle East, a very capable team, which has been now put together so that we are -- this year, we should start seeing our discussions with a lot of game publishers and brands about partnerships in UAE and Saudi Arabia. And that's what we are kind of really looking at.

On this business, because we set up the whole team, as you would all appreciate, a team doesn't really be productive from day 0 in Middle East. And this business is in investment phase. And over the year, we were working -- or really working on this business to ensure that we have meaningful partnerships, and we can really become a go-to game marketing agency in Middle East for global publishers and global gaming brands and also create synergy between Nodwin and Publishme to really expand our eSports footprint in Middle East.

I move to [indiscernible] which is a gamified segment. We -- all of you on the call have kind of discussed this. We delivered a 16% growth in revenues. The growth momentum has slowed down. If you look at quarter 4 year-on-year, it's almost flat. It's purely because of the news on acquisition, which is becoming challenging on account of the Apple IDFA policy. We are doing multiple experiments here to ensure that our growth momentum can come back, including the mix of the channels, which at the beginning of the year last year to now has completely changed. And that speaks volume about the resiliency of the team where a lot of global players have demonstrated drop in their revenues, including Netflix, Zynga, Facebook, Unity, we have been able to really change the mix of advertising spend and ensure that we have delivered 16% growth or we have not declined in quarter-on-quarter. And that's what we are really doing.

This has also taken its toll on cost per trial, which is increasing. And it will stay at that level for some quarters where we are really looking at more experiments. But the important thing is we have launched a brand campaign in the U.S. We believe that the performance marketing can play that much toll in the new normal of Apple policy. And hence, we are looking at how to build an endearing relationship with the kids and their parents who are very, very warm brand campaign, and that has been launched.

Any brand campaign is not a magical fill which we'll create immediately. What we are really looking at some of the lead indicators of searches, of organic downloads, all those parameters we will be keeping a watch. But we are now looking at also merchandise. We have Captain Kid, is an IP, is our own IP. We have looked at how do we reward our loyal users through some kind of merchandising and build brand activity. So there are many experiments happening on this particular IP so that we can really look at from a growth point of view.

I will cover a lot of the nuances in the Q&A because I'm sure there'll be a lot of Q&A on marketing spend, LTV, ARPUs, and then we can do that.

Freemium business, we had a modest growth of 9% year-on-year, INR 21 crores or INR 213 million of revenue, 19% EBITDA margin. The 2 things which I want to highlight. We believe that the massive amount of community cult following that this IP has that we've proven the imagine model, foray into web3 can be very successful, and we are actively working on that to really create aggregate offering in web3, leveraging our strength.

Given that some of the new native [crypto native] developers which are coming do not have a proven game engine, do not have proven communities, it kind of puts us into a pole position to really capture ticket industry, and that's what we are really working actively, and we are setting up a blockchain team to really look at what kind of form shape we will be doing it and you will hear very soon from us.

In terms of our M&A in freemium, we have mentioned that before, this segment needs to be clearly a much larger and bigger segment, not just INR 213 million revenue. And our M&A will be -- this will be the biggest focus in this year in terms of M&A. And we will be looking at Griffin Studios who are doing in the vicinity of $3 million to $5 million and a high growth potential. And that's what we will be looking at in M&A this year.

On the OpenPlay, which we acquired in September. I'm very, very pleased to inform you that we have grown the company when we acquired. There was net revenue in run rate was around in the vicinity of INR 42 crores to INR 45 crores. Now that run rate is almost INR 65 crores, INR 70 crores. So that is something which is -- has been achieved through a very strong data-driven tech platform, which has looked at operational efficiencies of increasing ARPUs of repeated users, creating a predictive modeling in terms of news and acquisitions, and that has resulted in growing almost like 14%, 15% month-on-month.

Our underlying ratios of cost per player has also come down, and we are looking at ROAS, which we used to be [indiscernible] in terms of 8, 9 months, has come to 6, 7 months, which is quite a very difficult task. And given that we are a challenger in a highly cluttered ecosystem of running operators, where top 3, 4 guys are very, very large. In spite of that, we have been able to kind of achieve it. And we can proudly say that in the industry, we would be same as some of the best the top players in terms of our ROAS and breakeven and that gives us strong footing to increase our user spend as we keep moving post-IPO scenario, and that's what we are discussing with the team.

Our positivity on the database automated systems has also ensured that we have an uptick in EBITDA. However, at this juncture, I want to underline that if I can get a unit economics of 5, 6, 7 months,of breakeven and the LTV/CAC which we have in this business, I would rather kind of press the accelerator on growth, rather than trying to kind of maximize EBITDA.

We are -- as we have mentioned, we have taken that we have really looked at the product and tech capability of this team. We have to again inform that now we have built an underlying platform, which can consolidate any number of brands with the common data view, one common tech platform. And the first company which we are integrating is our own HalaPlay. The integration will be finished after the IPO. We didn't want to touch the HalaPlay during IPO season. But all the underground work has already happened, and we are kind of emerging it in into one common tech platform. And that will be a good test and confidence for us as we go in consolidation in this area in the year forward.

Our Telco segment has declined by 17%. We delivered INR 624 million revenues. The EBITDA margins, as you can see, has improved from last year. It is 22.8% versus 15.2%. The absolute EBITDA has also grown by 25%. This is a cash cow. However, the question which is there, are we kind of really writing it off in terms of decline? No, we are kind of really working with new partners to see if we can really stand the decline and get it back to a growth phase. In a couple of next quarters, we will be able to tell you more concretely whether this should be taken as a growth driver or should it be taken as status here or should we budget some decline of 5%, 7%, 10%. So we'll come back to you.

Datawrkz. Some of you were aware, we acquired the company in -- we finished the acquisition in the April. The consolidation will happen from the April onwards for this business. This is an enabler capability building play for Nazara so that we can really be a strong publisher in years to come. It will helpful of a deep tech stack, which can help us to optimize user acquisition as well as ad monetization. The company is doing fantastically well. And in the quarter -- Nazara first quarter, we will talk more about Datawrkz. And during this quarter, I will give you more KPIs of Datawrkz, and I'll give you more insights on Datawrkz.

But however, the company is doing very, very well. And the integration with some of the subsidiaries, which are natural integrations, whether it's Sportskeeda, whether it is NextPlay, there's OpenPlay, Paperboat, the discussions are happening between the leadership teams. And depending upon the experiments, which will start, we'll be knowing how and where we will be successful and where we will not be successful in driving the synergies. So in a couple of quarters, you will come to know on the Datawrkz on both on the synergy side, but on the KPIs and its growth in quarter 1 onwards. We'll start sharing more details.

Last but not least, I have mentioned this multiple times on M&A. Our current portfolio is super strong. We'll deliver a lot of growth, but we do not want to kind of just sit and look at the current portfolio as some of you would like to do. We believe there are the opportunity of gaming and the segments which we are -- is an amazing opportunity in front of us, and we want to kind of really plug white spaces, which we have seen, whether it's white prices in gamified learning, whether it's expansion of esports into other emerging markets, whether acquiring of more game studios in freemium or whether consolidating RNG or on the influencer building capability side. We would love to kind of do an M&A because we believe those are essential white spaces for us to fill and create a very, very strong Nazara, Friends on the Nazara network as a platform, which we can really drive completely.

The capital allocation discussion for us is very simple. All our companies are really generating cash. If they need to kind of really look at, they can deploy their own cash. And if they need more than that, we can always sit down. So that's not an issue for them. Our capital allocation will be on M&A side or increasing some equity in downstream subsidiaries, wherever we think it's an amazing opportunity for us to kind of a, increase our equity; b, reward the founder for the great performance they have delivered.

Our capital allocation predominantly would be on M&A. And that's why -- and the M&A at subsidiary level as well as at the corporate level will be constant.

To summarize, I think this is supremely important for you to understand that this is a company which is on a very high growth path. We are a company which is really looking at these white spaces and the growth of our overall portfolio. And we are on a very, very strong ticket. And we have a DNA and I'd like to kind of reiterate, our DNA of anti-fragile where we always believe that keep doing the work for first principles, look at businesses from first principles and keep your head down and keep delivering the performance year after year.

Some of you may look at sequentially in quarters, I will urge you to look at on a year-on-year basis because of the seasonality so that you get the right picture and you are not kind of restricted yourself on looking at the numbers. So I will kind of hand it over to Mr. Joshi for Q&A.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Nitin Jain from Fairview Investments.

[Unknown Analyst]

So my question is on the Nodwin business specifically. So if I do a deep dive, like we can see a drop in profitability for the quarter as well as for the full year. So like for FY '22, we have dropped from, say, high single digits to mid-single digits. So if you could clarify, is there some structural change in our approach or in the market? So that is the first question.

And the second one is with the increased competitive intensity from the players like Sky Sports, what is the path for this business going forward?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Nitin, thanks for the question. Let me just kind of answer both of them. Nodwin if you look at it, in FY '21, they delivered a 9% margin. In FY '22, to 7.4% margin. I think in the presentation, which we uploaded it also includes Publishme numbers, and I will ask my IR team to segregate them so that you can get a clear picture. So it's 9% to 7.4%, while the revenue has grown by 55%.

Yes, I've always maintained, NODWIN would be a 6%, 7% business kind of number. Your 9% was predominantly because of no off-line events really happening in FY '21. In FY '22, we have NH7 in March. And still, we have still not have more and more in offline events. Going forward, I would say you should take Nodwin in the vicinity of 6% to 7% because we would like to, A, do more and more off-line and build the sports ecosystem. B, we will invest in new IPs and also augment our current IPs. So that is where I would kind of really urge you to look at from a Nodwin perspective.

We are not really looking at the operating leverage hitting in the market right now. The operating leverage will come in when there are 2 factors really driving. One factor is multiplicity of OTT platforms bidding for the same content. We are already starting to see that happening between local router fighting with each other and -- on bidding with each other for the similar kind of content. And we are also seeing more and more platforms in emerging. And in the next 3, 4 years, that should drive the pricing of the content and IP if you are IP is big.

The second piece is the more and more games. If you look at, you have predominantly very few games in India, which can really have an esports viewership and you can say that we can command viewership, which is for some ordering platforms and brands to look at. As more games really kind of come into India in the next 2 years, we will have far more opportunity to create more combinations of games and events or you can drive your margins. So I think that is where we are.

On the competition piece, my 2 cents are very simple. We are kind of talking about INR 210 crores, INR 211 crores of business revenue. I'm not sure if you have checked these numbers, they may maybe is sub INR 5 crores, INR 6 crores or maybe INR 7 crores at that.

Second thing is I would really look at all the esports more and more tournaments to come. Because the more tournaments happen at grassroot, the better it is for a feeder, for eyeballs viewership for us. Now as I've always mentioned, Nodwin is in the business of building IPs and the top 200 players. The grassroots is what we do with publishers to increase our catchment area for viewership. And many such players which will come in the market can only increase the grassroot for the large IPs to have more and more concurrent viewership as well as overall viewership. So it's a very welcome thing for us to have in market.

[Unknown Analyst]

Great. So that's quite helpful. If I could just slip in a follow-up to the first question. So are you hinting that due to the competition between the platforms, the local and the other one you mentioned, are you hinting that there could be a pricing leverage here going forward, some kind of pricing power?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Any esports IP always works on pricing power coming out of their IP strength and the viewership in fees. And the case in point is very simple, you look at the media rights of IP in the last 3 bidding rounds, right? And you will yourself seeing the pricing power which is coming in or you take any kind of sports IP, which happened, whether it's a FIFA broadcasting rights or it's a [indiscernible] broadcasting right. So fundamentally, whenever our sports IP becomes -- keeps becoming bigger and bigger and larger than life, the pricing power comes in because the platforms would like to have head content to create more users coming to the platform.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Mukul Garg from Motilal Oswal Financial Services.

[Mukul Garg, analyst]

Manish, the first question was on Kiddopia. You mentioned in the presentation that you're looking at, I think, an incremental almost about INR 1.6 million spend on over YouTube as well as on brand building next quarter. Can you just help decide whether to help us with any thoughts on -- are these targets which will -- what are the targets which you have internally, which will decide the success or failure of the exercise? Is this something which will be right now on a trial basis? Or do you expect it to continue over the next few quarters as well?

And also, are they being done outside the iOS. Given that they haven't been done outside the iOS ecosystem, is there a way to monetize them outside as well without compromising on user experience? Or you still don't think that is an optionality, which is there with you?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Mukul, on the 2 things that you mentioned about. So if I look at broadly, we do INR 800,000 on a month, and you would see as business as usual. And the mix of that from the last year where you used to have 50% on Google, 30% on Apple and 10% on Facebook has considerably changed. Apple remaining the same. But Facebook and Google have gone out and Unity and so on, those other channels have come in. So that's where your current stable bread and butter is coming from INR 800,000.

We believe roughly around INR 300,000-odd we can spend on YouTube because YouTube used to be one of the big components within Google of 60%. That used to kind of drive a lot of scale. We are seeing some green shoot. It's still on a trial experimental phase to kind of quote your words. But if you really kind of can get that back, the growth can be much higher because YouTube, as you know, is a great channel for us to -- it can give us a lot of volumes, if we can crack it. That's that part.

And roughly INR 300,000 is what we are putting for the brand campaign which we are really wanting to create a more mouth of the funnel trials for Kiddopia. We are running it across multiple touch points whether it's connected TVs or whether it's broadcasting or even on YouTube or other publishers, which are relevant for this.

And how would we measure a brand campaign? The YouTube campaign is still fairly straightforward because you will be able to figure out your cost per trial. But on a brand campaign, you can't have a direct correlation for a cost per trial. So the indicators which we are going to look at, we are going to look at how is that organic purchase of Kiddopia as a brand is increasing. We are going to look at if there are increase in visitors on the page of App Store and Google from this campaign. That is the kind of indicators which we'd like to track to see the efficacy of our brand campaign.

[Mukul Garg, analyst]

Sure. And the other point was about given that these are outside the iOS ecosystem, is there a way to build them outside and save that 30%?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

I don't know [indiscernible] that, right? I don't know on that because is that the problem are we solving now? We are not. The problem statement we are solving is how do we get more and more velocity of new subscriber addition into the business.

At this juncture, I don't think the 30% is a problem we should be really looking at. That's a good problem to solve once we have seen, let's say, our marketing campaign working or YouTube working and then we come into efficiency of optimization of margins. And that's where we will come into it. But right now a single mind rigor focus is how do we get velocity of new subscribers increasing without compromising on their retention -- basically without compromising the quality of users.

[Mukul Garg, analyst]

Sure. And I think second question, I think broadly during your introductory remarks over, I think, multiple states you have kind of taper debt. But how are you looking at the M&A strategy after the recent price correction? Do you expect the interest of potential targets to be more on cash deals given that the broader market price has corrected so much? And how much of the cash you will kind of earmark for M&A?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Mukul, correction has happened across the market, not just on [indiscernible], right? And I'm sure if you talk to a lot of people who do in the private deals, the valuation expectations or the excitement, our exuberance around evaluations, even in the private space has come down quite sharply. That is also giving us an opportunity to look at more and more studios outside and also in India because the same discussions which are happening in different multiples are happening or can happen based on my understanding in bankers and some of the founders with the lower numbers because the investors sitting there also have kind of realigned their expectations. So I think it's an overall correction, which is really going to help. It's a relative, it's not an absolute for [indiscernible] and somebody else.

The second thing is, we are also kind of looking at these where we can really create a combination of, let's say, just to give you a perspective, it's in real money gaming space. We are sort of electing to the founders that you can merge your equity with OpenPlay and create and take that equity rather than Nazara equity because that's where you can now build scale. And the companies which are needing to grow may need to really look at when it's becoming 2.5 or 3 or 5 or 11, and they understand that. So a lot of your equity dilution, which is you could avoid by having a downstream consolidation happening, while you can pay some cash, which you have raised at a higher value and put it to use for your deals.

So these kind of discussions we'll be very -- we'll be doing that. We believe that the Nazara's model and the track record, a scaling company after taking them over really is a very, very strong goodwill which we have along the founders. And that really will help us in doing these avenues.

[Mukul Garg, analyst]

Sure. That was really useful. Just a small clarification, if I may. There was a small INR 10 crore investment in Kiddopia. Was it a requirement for cash infusion or is there something which more cash requirement can come in from that side?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

We look at it significantly and this was as far as shareholder agreement. If the founders has achieved that target, which I remember was INR 170-odd crores, if they had done it within a time period, they were entitled for INR 10 crores secondary investment and that's what we did.

And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we'll be happy to have founders who are hitting the ball out of the park. And if they need some secondary earnings, we will not hesitate because that's our way to kind of really demonstrate our endorsement of these great efforts.

[Mukul Garg, analyst]

Best of luck for 2022.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Thank you. Thanks. I look forward to many more interactions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Deep Shah from B&K Securities.

[Deep Shah, analyst]

Thanks, Manish, for the opportunity and for the detailed clarification at the start. Manish, 2 questions from my side, both on the esports business. One is about your own IP and then the events you do for others, whereby some events are streamed on our channel and then some are not. Is there a way you could help us better understand the differences and their respective contributions? Because where I'm coming from is, one, how do we read the content or metric that you provided? And second, when we talk about increasing share of distribution money or broadcast money, I think a lot of it will only flow to us in our own IPs or other events which are on our own streaming platforms. So if you can help us better understand that, that would be very helpful.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

And I think a lot of lines in your answer, and I'll just kind of pull that out. So we do 2 types of events. One, we do white label, what we call white label events, which we work with the game publishers or, let's say, brand or let's say, a platform, which wants to kind of really attract more and more people at grassroot level. Now at grassroot level, we will not kind of really attract so much of viewership because you are not having the best of the players who will be playing, that becomes a cost plus model for us. And that's why it's called white label. And that's very important for us because it seeds the market. It builds the esports market and it becomes a feeder to our viewership of our top IPs where the best players are playing.

Now what is our IP? Our IPs are IPs which we are organizing, which we are investing, which we are defining the price pool and we are taking the risk. It's not a cost-plus model. It's -- you are investing in execution, you're investing in price pool, you are investing in marketing of it and you're investing in kind of really building a long-term brand out of it.

Now those are the IPs. As you rightly said, they will have a price premium over a period of time. And that's the sporting IP is our moat and will remain a moat. Hence, it is important for us to keep strengthening our current IPs and building more IPs across different cohorts and segments of consumers, players, games, geographies, et cetera. And that is where this business is all about.

Now if you look at -- one thing which you mentioned, and I want to correct. Nodwin is not into a channel. It is not having a streaming platform of its own because we don't believe that that's a very, very path to profitability business, at least for next 3 to 5 years. And hence, what we have done is we have kind of restricted ourselves to create premium IPs and content thereof. And then we partner with OTT platforms, which are wanting to have that content and player for the viewership on their platform exclusively.

So we don't have any channel. Our IPs since the market is still in [indiscernible] space, we try to kind of build it on YouTube because YouTube is still the biggest reach and the widest reach, and it creates more and more viewership and the IP's strength keeps increasing. Until there is a significant amount of money on the table for us to really take our IP onto some platform, which has more -- which has much lower reach, we will not be very open to doing that. We would continue to build the IP viewership and IP strength on YouTube or any other channel which can give us far-reaching reach.

IPs which we are creating, like what charts which you spoke about, those are the IPs we are working with publishers to create them. And these are long-term relationships because you have Valorant is a game which is very popular in PC users. As and when mobile happens, it can be popular, you can't just be dependent on one game for your viewership. And you need to co-invest along with the game publisher to really build that ecosystem. And that's where we really come in the picture as a long-term partner for any game publisher.

[Deep Shah, analyst]

Fair enough. The second question is on -- so we had earlier spoken about trying to get in live advertisements in our streams. And I think in February, we had also acquired 51% in the Rusk distribution. So any updates on that?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

So 2 different questions. What for us is a content play. And as Nitish made in his opening remarks, we are working with Rusk to capture one area of gaming, which is not yet with us. As that gaming -- entertainment content with a very, very strong context of gaming and that's where the Rusk capabilities come of creating content, distributing content, monetizing content. And that's why this investment and partnership is there, where the entire gaming monetization will be kind of coming to us. And we'll be working very closely with Rusk to really give gamers insights, the influencers which they need and co-create these kind of IPs. That's where the Rusk is.

In terms of streaming and advertising on streaming, as you would appreciate that when you do an exclusive deal with, let's say, a local router, it's like IPL being given to Hotstar or Star Sports. Then the broadcasters, it's their job to figure out what is the ads they want to insert and where they want to insert. Similarly, on YouTube, we do not have much say on the live streaming or a content ad insertion. However, we can always add sponsorships, and that's what we do.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Rahul Jain from Dolat Capital.

[Rahul Jain, analyst]

So firstly, just a small extension to a question which has already been asked, but on the Kiddopia side, I mean, we have mentioned that our landings are moreover secured. And you have clearly mentioned that you want to top it up with the higher scale with the subscription growth as well mindset. But just wanted to understand your thought that will that be more like a Q1, Q2 kind of a thing? Or that is something like we have to get the subscriber growth irrespective of the cost kind of a mindset? Because I guess our consumer side of the -- from a demand perspective must be still very robust given the category it is in. Then why do shy away from going for a big time growth when our rankings are intact and we can afford to spend in the existing opportunities? As we are equally looking strong on the inorganic side, why not invest big money in the organic opportunity itself?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Rahul, you are absolutely right. And that's why if you see, I mentioned INR 800,000 was business as usual. We are almost putting INR 600,000 extra on aggressive growth per month on seeing that how does it really kind of take it forward, combination of YouTube and Rusk. We would love to kind of do it start for May and then continue it for at least May, June, evaluate ourselves on how is it doing. Trust us if we are seeing the positive effect, we are not going to shy away from investing into that business because this business, we have had a huge amount of conviction on the headroom it has for growth. And the -- as you rightly said, the robustness of the product reflected in credential engagement continues to be very good. We will look at that in June and then if things are even looking at 80%, okay, we'll continue to do it in Q2.

So this will be a constant review and take kind of a step on the next quarter. And then if I tell you that next whole year, we are going to do this, I'm just kind of picking up a blind statement -- making a blind statement, but the intent is what you articulated and our intent is exactly the same.

[Rahul Jain, analyst]

And we don't have any constraint from the founders in terms of any potential dilution if there's a need of infusion to do that?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

If you understand, founders are the guys who are really passionate about the product, and that's why our structure works beautifully. And they are spending endless hours to kind of really get back to growth because no founder likes to not see a growth. And in this process, if they have to take money, they will take money. Just for your information, Kiddopia already have INR 75 crores of cash with them. So it's not that they are not cash. They are also a positive working capital business, barring the brand campaign.

So from all of that perspective, they have the cash. B, if they need the cash, neither they nor will us -- nor us will shy from putting in money.

[Rahul Jain, analyst]

Right, right. That's quite helpful. And if I can ask one more. On the R&D side, we have shared a couple of very interesting metrics in terms of how we have done the reduction in the breakeven time period. I would appreciate if you could share the right KPIs for us to follow in this space to understand how these things will play out and how the monetization here would play out. And also what kind of synergies we would plan to bring by getting everyone into one platform. So more inputs here would be helpful.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

So our only KPI that we are aware of, what I'd say, sensitivity on competitive information versus public information, right? The ROAs itself is something which is very competitive information because it kind of really exposes you from other challengers who can come after you. And this is a very competitive business. In spite of that, we came out with the ROAs, we've also told you cost per pay ratio, and we have looked at what's happening.

Let me kind of think through on what KPIs I can really share, which helps you in kind of giving you confidence on the lead indicators, but also not kind of shying the business competitive advantage, which we created. So let me come back to you over the next few weeks on what needs to be done there. Otherwise, the growth in their user base, growth in their revenues and growth in their unit economics is something which can be at a high level, but it's an outcome. So let me come back to you on that.

On the synergies, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, building one tech platform, which can really power multiple brands at the consumer-facing level is the goal of this product extract. We have built it, now HalaPlay is the first one. And as we move along in talking to other RMG players, which are -- which can be complementary and add value, this is a common tech platform, which will come in. And this is the same kind of impacts -- positive impact that you have seen on the increasing the ARPUs of repeat users, retail user, having a predictive modeling on user acquisition will be given off the shelf to any other platform which will become part of it, besides removing the frictions, which the user may have on their log-in or media registration or in deposit.

[Rahul Jain, analyst]

Right, right. Much appreciated. Just a clarification, you said something on the NODWIN that off-line events this year would add something incremental revenue and milk that number, if you could share that again?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

70-odd for us is what I believe is the addition which you will see this year?

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Karan Uppal from Philip Capital.

[Unknown Analyst]

So firstly, a clarification on Kiddopia. So the revenue last quarter got impacted by around INR 6 crores due to accounting change, which was expected to be added in Q4. But if I look at Q4 incremental revenue addition, it's just INR 4 crores. So does that mean that on a quarterly basis, Kiddopia has declined?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

No, no, I think you're reading it wrong. It was not INR 6 crores to be added back to the next quarter. It is just the rollover number because what you were doing earlier is that because you're getting monthly data, your multi subscriber, whether the person has come on 28th or is coming on 1st, you're taking as a month. Now that you've started getting daily data, you had to take onetime hit, and that was Q3 of INR 6 crores at which you took. It is not to be added back. So if you look at the real number, 53 versus 54 is what you would look at.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. Got that. Secondly, on Kiddopia, Manish, if you look at the CAC is now at 36 versus 26 a year back. So how high can it go from here? What's the upper limit for LTV-to-CAC to breakeven? And also, any color on the subscriber growth for FY '23?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

I think what Rahul was asking a similar thing. The choices in front of us is that we look at bringing down to 28, 29, 30 in quarterly subscriber growth. The choice is to continue to be 36 and that INR 800,000 which I said is broadly at the same level, we'll continue to get what we are getting today, right?

And the other thing is completely remove the guardrails of cost per trial and go for aggressive growth and kind of we look at today are breakeven in terms of advertising spend comes in 12, 13 months, which used to be 10 months. And you can just take all that anything the market is very, very strong and you can really go beyond CPT. I don't think we are at that stage in our mindset. We are saying that the cost per trial will remain at 36, 37, 35, whatever number, but in that range. As far as the performance marketing is concerned.

When I will tell you the results for next quarter, I'm not going to add the brand marketing to it because brand marketing currently just guided to the performance marketing and arrive at cost per trial. So I'll kind of report it in a separate number and give it to you. So that's what we are kind of looking at.

Are we going to go back to 28, 29, 30 level on '24, No, we are not because we believe that the product is very strong, market is very large, and we do not want to charter the new subscriber addition just because we want to maximize EBITDA.

[Unknown Analyst]

So based on your understanding as well as the experiments which we are doing with all marketing, what kind of subscriber growth can we do in FY '23?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Honestly, the brand marketing, nobody can predict. YouTube, as I mentioned, it's in, let's say, in a couple of months when we talk about June quarter, I will be able to give you some insights on YouTube, whether it's working or not working, right? As of now, let's keep them as an experimental ideas. From a business as usual perspective, you can look at a 5%, 6% increase in the subscriber numbers, right? But that's what -- without any experiment, if we were not to do an experiment, if you were to turn [indiscernible] and sit idle and sit tight on our cash, I don't see that as an optimal activity for us to be okay with.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Subrata Sarkar from Mount Intra Finance.

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes, my question has been answered.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Kapil Agarwal from ADAS Capital.

[Unknown Analyst]

So Manish, I wanted to understand the thought process behind the bonus issue that you've come out with. So I just wanted to understand your thought process behind that.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

I would like Nitish to comment. He is -- it's his prerogative to answer this, and I would request him to do that.

[Nitish Mittersain, executive]

Yes, sure. So happy to share that. So like I said in the opening statement, Nazara has had a 22-year history of creating value for the shareholders. And we just felt that to appreciate our shareholders as well as commemorate first anniversary of being a listed issue, this is something we wanted to do for the shareholders.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Aman Rich from Astute Investment Management.

[Unknown Analyst]

Manish, my first set of questions is on the esports side, basically on Nodwin. So you have mentioned that 21% contribution for the full year was from media rights. So if you can break the remaining 80%, and if you can also talk about the growth.

The second part on the NODWIN is on the number of events, which we are planning for FY '23 to come to that INR 70 crores, INR 80 crores number which we are targeting. And if you can talk about this.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Yes, Aman. Thanks for asking a very good question, both of them. So if you look at, I'll answer the second one. If you look at pre-COVID, used to have India premiership which was roughly $1 million property. We used to have [indiscernible], 0.5 million. We used to have [indiscernible] generating around INR 20 crores, INR 30 crores, INR 30-odd crores. So you're talking about 30, 37 by 42. And then we had other properties which we acquired some more in the INR 20 crores, INR 25-odd crores. And that's the breakup between the partnership and some -- there is 1 or 2 more properties. So these are all established properties, long-term properties, 7, 8 years vintage with the brands who have been backing them up. And so that's where there's just a low escalation in the sponsorship. It is just coming from what used to do in 2019 or OML used to do in 2019, yes?

On the nonmedia piece of your question, 20%, 20%. So there are 4 lines of business which we have besides media. I think somebody else had asked about IPs. So we have white label business. We have our own IP business. We have a D2C business. These are the other 3 businesses besides the media business, which we have in our portfolio. And roughly, white label business the breakup, we have not given off each of them individually, and we would not like to kind of do that. But that's the 3 lines of businesses besides the media business, which we have in our portfolio.

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. If you can talk about the growth, if not the numbers, actual numbers, but what was the growth we had seen in this segment?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Absolutely. So if you look at the overall growth of what around 55% is what we are to looking have generated in NODWIN, right? And if you see on that, you have said media business has grown roughly around 84%, right in quarter 4. All our businesses have broadly grown in the single line about some percentages here and there. And it is not that one line of business is kind of indicating or driving the overall growth.

In this year, '22, '23, with the addition of WINGS as gaming accessories and superhero and [indiscernible] business [indiscernible], we believe that could become a significant contributor to growth besides the off-line even, which I spoke about. And the D2C business can itself emerge as a great amenity and locking exercise for us in going the next 3, 4 years.

This year, we may be in investment mode on the gaming accessory business. But going forward, as the scale really happens, operating leverage is very strong, and we should be able to see this to be a good margin driver as well.

[Unknown Analyst]

Sure. My second and final question is on the -- on the M&A side, if you can talk about what was the total outflow and divide it also in terms of cash out flow as well as, say, share-based outflow for FY '22 to as well as, say, the pending for FY '23 and our target maybe for FY '23.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

So I don't have a target for FY '23. As I mentioned that we don't take a target and say that this is a chunk of money which has been allocated for M&A because we are not doing an opportunistic M&A. We are looking for good things first and good products first and then kind of really deploy our cash.

So there is no target, but there are white spaces, as I mentioned. And those white spaces teams are working on that. However, are we kind of desperate to do an M&A to drive growth? No. Our M&A is predominantly coming from our business to continue to have a dominance and leadership and market share. That's where we are.

To answer your question on FY '22, total investments leading to cash and equity, I can ask the team to give it to you. I don't have a handy table in front of me, but we can quickly put it on site.

Ami, can you please take note of it.

[Operator]

The next question is from the line of Depesh Kashyap from Equirus.

[Depesh Kashyap, analyst]

Sir, just to clarify on the INR 70 crore, INR 80 crore number that you are saying the additional happened this year. So that is mainly from the OML entries, they were not happening. But where -- when I consider your events, IP U.S., they are already happening in the online mode. So when you do an offline mode, how does your revenues change? I just want to understand that.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Depesh, 2 things, India premiership agreement didn't happen even in online, if you see in '21, '22. So those events didn't happen, right? And second thing to answer your question, how does this change? I'm sure you have attended a lot of online conferences. And you know the engagement and the energy on online versus an offline and the brands really shy away from sponsoring an online conference versus what they want to put in money in offline. So that's where the real energy excitement, interaction, everything happens. And which is why you would see many more events happening where the brands will be more and more okay or even in our line of field or mind line of field, business confidence is starting to happen with sponsorships are coming along, right? So we didn't do online events, and that's what we will do now.

[Depesh Kashyap, analyst]

Sir, any number you can give to the [indiscernible] and the [indiscernible] India event, how much revenue generated per year?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

[indiscernible] roughly around INR 3.5 crores, INR 4 crores, INR 4.5 crores kind of a [indiscernible]. India premiership used to be INR 5 crores to INR 7 crores. Now those are the numbers which we need to go and secure from our brand advertisers. There has been a gap of 2 years and the brands have also kind of moved on. So let's kind of really work on those things.

[Depesh Kashyap, analyst]

Got it. Lastly, sir, on the M&A, you mentioned the freemium segment will be a focus area this year. So does it also mean that given the headwinds you're facing in the Kiddopia, the acquisition in the gamified learning segment that 7 to 12-ish category that you have talked about a lot of times, that has taken a back seat?

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

No, not really. Not really. Just that the opportunities in freemium are far more because it's again that studios, opportunities in [indiscernible] are lesser. And that's why we don't want to kind of do sequentially saying that we will first do this and then follow this and then do this. It's purely a function of -- what is the -- your ability to fill those white spaces across segments.

Now at the esports level, Nodwin has its own team, and they can drive their own white spaces. Similarly, in Kiddopia now we are kind of looking at them driving the white spaces at freemium at the corporate level, we need to drive because that segment is very small. And likewise, in the real money gaming.

So other 2 segments have their own strength. They have their own team, and now they are tendering their teams down below for M&A. So there is no back seat there. It's a function of what we want to be any kind of pickup and move forward from the opportunity available in the market.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, due to time constraints, that was the last question for today. I now hand the conference over to the management for closing comments.

[Jinesh Joshi, analyst]

Thank you, everyone, for spending time today with us. We look forward to being in touch and delivering strong results in the year that's FY '23. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

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.

[Manish Agarwal, executive]

Thank you. Thanks, everyone.