Swedish gaming giant Modern Times Team (MTG) has acquired British startup PlaySimple for at least $360 million, the two firms said Friday.
MTG said it will pay 77% of the acquisition sum to Indian game developer and publisher in cash and the rest in company shares. There’s also another $150 million reward put aside if certain undisclosed performance metrics are hit, the two firms said.
Friday’s deal marks one of the < a meaningful href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/05/indias-byjus-acquires-whitehat-jr-for-300-million/"> largest exits in just the Indian startup ecosystem . PlaySimple had raised $4 million Series A with valuation of about $16 100 thousands from Elevation Capital and in addition Chiratae Ventures in 2016. (The startup, which instead began its journey in Bangalore, raised just $4. seven million in total from outer investors. )
And its clear why: the earning potential of PlaySimple — which experts claim operates nine word flash games including “Daily Themed Crossword, ” “Word Trip, ” “Word Jam, ” together with “Word Wars” — planted by 144% y-o-y to positively $83 million last year and this was on track to hit excessively $60 million revenue in just the first half of 2021.
“We’re very certainly the games we’ve made over the years, and of the system and scale that we achieved with our team, ” said PlaySimple co-founders and moreover management team members — Siddhanth Jain, Suraj Nalin but also Preeti Reddy — in an exceedingly joint statement.
“As we join these MTG family, we look toward leveraging our proprietary products across MTG’s gaming account, expanding into the European industry, investing in cutting-edge technology yet building exciting new to determine. ”
PlaySimple, which says its free-to-play games have amassed additional than 75 million installs and retain nearly 2 million in a daily basis active users, plans that will launch a number of games later on , this year and also expand into a card games genre.
“PlaySimple is a rapidly growing and in addition highly profitable games habitation that quickly has established itself as the leading global developers among free-to-play word games, a new genre for MTG, ” said Maria Redin, MTG Group President then CEO, said in a claim.
The Stockholm-headquartered firm, which has also adopted Hutch and Ninja Kiwi in recent years, said PlaySimple helps to it build a diversified igaming vertical. “Scaling and diversifying the GamingCo [an MTG subsidiary] helps to accelerate the actual operational performance while at the same time making your more stable business, ” the firm said.
