Gaming major Nextra to tap India for content creation

MUMBAI: London-based firm Euromax Capital, which teamed up with Italian investor Alessandro Benedetti and bought online gaming firm Nextra International, plans to tap India both as a market and a content development base for the acquired firm, a top official said.

“India is the next frontier for leisure products and we would look to replicate Nextra’s European growth in the Indian gaming landscape as well,” Euromax managing director Darshan Desai said.

Nextra, which has an annual turnover of nearly 1 billion, offers online gaming and betting via prepaid scratch cards. Nextra’s ownership is split equally between Euromax and Mr Benedetti.

“The finer points for business plan for Nextra’s Indian foray are still being worked upon, but we would certainly look to bring the development work to India considering its cost-competitiveness,”

Mr Desai told ET. About 100 out of Nextra’s 3,000 employees are involved in content creation.Mr Desai said he expected Nextra to launch products for the India market in the first half of 2008. He also said that company would look to tie up with FMCG retailers in the country for the distribution network for its prepaid cards.

The Italian company owns an online bookmaker, Bestwin, as well as an 80 per cent stake in CSG, one of Italy’s largest scratch-card and prepaid card chains. It had just bought out Atlas Sport & Games, the company that owns the rights to Livebetting.com and holds gaming and betting licences throughout Europe. Apart from online gaming, Nextra would also target the mobile gaming segment in India considering the growth in mobile phone use in India, Mr Desai said. Nextra is also expanding to eastern Europe, Africa, China and Russia.

According to NASSCOM, the worldwide gaming market is expected to grow to $42 billion with the mobile and online gaming segments expected to grow at about 30 per cent and 25 per cent respectively till 2010. The Indian gaming industry that was estimated at nearly $48 million in 2006, is expected to cross $424 million by 2010, representing a compounded growth rate of 72 per cent over 2006-2010.