Swedish e-sports giant MTG acquires PlaySimple for $360 million

NEW DELHI: In one of the largest deals in the Indian gaming startup ecosystem, Sweden-headquartered e-sports and gaming group Modern Times Group (MTG) has acquired Bengaluru-based word games developer PlaySimple for $360 million.
MTG will pay 77 % in cash for the acquisition and the rest through its class B shares. The deal will allow the Swedish digital media group with a strong gaming portfolio to expand into newer markets such as India where smartphone adoption has exploded in recent times.
Through the acquisition, MTG is also eyeing the growing audience of female gamers, which currently accounts for around 80 % of PlaySimple’s total player base and India’s talent pool in the e-gaming sector.
As part of the transaction, PlaySimple’s early backers, Elevation Capital and Chiratae Ventures will make an exit. In 2016, the startup had raised $4 million from these two investors at a valuation of $16 million.
“PlaySimple is a rapidly growing and highly profitable games studio that quickly has established itself as one of the leading global developers of free-to-play word games, an exciting new genre for MTG,” said Maria Redin president and CEO at MTG Group.
While PlaySimple’s revenues rose 144 % in 2020 to $83 million, the mobile words game company carried the strong momentum into 2021 with estimated revenues for the first half of the year growing 82% to $60-64 million, compared to the same period last year.
Founded in 2014 by brothers Siddharth Jain and Siddhanth Jain – with fellow co-founders Preeti Reddy, and Suraj Nalin, PlaySimple currently has 215 full-time employees.
The startup has built games such as Daily Themed Crossword, Word Trip, Word Jam, Word Wars and Word Trek and has plans to launch four games during 2021, of which two are card games, a new genre for PlaySimple.
MTG recently acquired mobile games developers, Hutch and Ninja Kiwi.