Nazara Technologies ropes in Reliance Games's Manish Agarwal as its new CEO

MUMBAI: Nazara Technologies has roped in the former head of Reliance Games, Manish Agarwal, as its new chief executive officer (CEO), as the Mumbai based company beefs up for its next phase of growth. The mobile gaming firm’s founder and current CEO Nitish Mittersain will move to the role of managing director at the company. “As we really scale to the next level, a lot more bandwidth is needed at the top.

We felt one plus one could actually be 11 as far as management is concerned,” said Mittersain adding that Agarwal will bring in the experience of building premium smartphone games like Real Steel. The move comes amid Nazara’s ongoing fundraise of $75-100 million, for which it has mandated Credit Suisse. Agarwal was the CEO of Reliance Games for over four years.

His earlier stints incluse companies like Unilever, Microsoft, Rediff.com, UTV and Infosys. The India gaming opportunity could be as large as China, a market which I have seen moving from $300-400 million to $6 billion in the last four years,” said Agarwal, an IIM-A post graduate with a mechanical engineering degree from NIT Warangal. The gaming market is expected to pick up as technology firm Cisco predicts India’s smartphone user base will reach 651 million in the next four years.