Sweden-based gaming company Modern Times Group (MTG) has acquired PlaySimple – an Indian gaming startup for $360 million. The deal was announced on Friday by the two firms.
Modern Times Group will pay PlaySimple gaming studio 77 percent of the acquisition sum in cash and 23 percent in company shares. The firms also revealed that there is also a $150 million reward set aside if specific undisclosed performance metrics are reached.
PlaySimple gaming studio is based in Bangalore, India. In 2016, it raised $4 million in its Series A round from Chiratae Ventures and Elevation Capital at a valuation of $16 million. PlaySimple’s acquisition is one of India’s largest exits in the country’s startup ecosystem.
PlaySimple which operates nine word games, saw its revenue jump by 144 percent YoY to $83 million in 2020 and was on track to hit more than $60 million in revenue in the first half of 2021, according to Techcrunch’s report.
According to figures by PlaySimple, the startup has more than 75 million downloads of its games and an average of almost 2 million daily active users. PlaySimple also has plans of launching several new games before the year comes to an end and is looking to diversify into card games.
A joint statement by co-founders of the Indian startup – Siddhanth Jain, Suraj Nalin, and Preeti Reddy, said that “We’re very proud of the games we’ve developed over the years and of the infrastructure and scale that we’ve achieved with our team. As we join the MTG family, we look forward to leveraging our proprietary technology across MTG’s gaming portfolio, expanding into the European market, investing in cutting-edge technology, and building exciting new games”.
According to Maria Redin – MTG Group’s President and CEO, “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”.
Alongside its other acquisitions like Ninja Kiwi and Hutch, MTG said that PlaySimple will aid the company in building an improved gaming profile, accelerate operational performance and give the business more stability and diversity.
