Technology

JetSynthesys raises Rs 300 crore, deepens foray into gaming, digital entertainment & social community platforms

Updated : July 08, 2020 07:03 PM IST

New age digital entertainment and technology company, JetSynthesys, has raised a capital infusion of Rs 300 crore to deepen its global foray into gaming, digital entertainment, and interest-based social community platforms.

With over 100 million consumers and across 180 countries, the fresh capital will be leveraged to launch new products, ramp up technology, talent, and content, accelerate marketing, and expand the consumer base over the next 36 months.

The fresh capital comes from existing shareholders of JetSynthesys, part of the Navani family owned Jetline Group, led by the family office of Adar Poonawalla, and Kris Gopalakrishnan. Other shareholders of JetSynthesys include India’s leading billion dollar family offices of the promoters of Thermax, Triveni Group and DSP Group.

The venture claims that the fundraise positions JetSynthesys amongst India’s first tech and gaming unicorns with a global presence, and partnerships in countries such as Japan, United States and Europe, one of the only Indian players to do so.

Rajan Navani, vice chairman and managing director, JetSynthesys said, "Since our inception, we have believed in the power of technology, content and digital transactions converging to impact the daily lives of people positively. The current times have seen a huge surge in data consumption and large investments have come into telecom providers of data. In that light, we have succeeded in creating products and platforms with world class expertise that have found their niche with millions of end consumers who ride on this data infrastructure and consume this data."

"We want to use this latest fundraise to create more success stories at scale, across varying demographics, geographies, and socio-economic classes; similar to what we achieved with Nodwin Gaming, an esports venture we co-founded that has grown to about INR 100 crore revenues in just 4 years. We’re confident this fresh capital will help us to further strengthen our technology, content and distribution stacks in a new emerging era of contactless experiences through made in India apps with the best talent available globally, funded through Indian capital," Navani said.

With an annual run rate of Rs 20-50 crore in revenue, JetSynthesys claims that the infused capital will be leveraged to put the venture’s digital platforms into high gear, each of which are currently poised to reach Rs 100 crore in annual revenue in the next 24 to 36 months.

Adar Poonawalla, chief executive officer, Serum Institute of India, and scion of the Cyrus Poonawalla Group, said, "Our family office has had a long history with healthcare and wellness. In light of recent global developments, digital products and services are the need of the hour, since they help everyone feel connected, while also contributing towards social distancing."

"Gaming, social communities, and digital entertainment have thus become basic essentials in this new normal, and I’m happy to be associated with a company like JetSynthesys which is playing a critical role in these sectors, not just in India, but also globally. I am privy to the developments on this front, and I foresee some exciting times ahead for all of us," Poonawalla said.

The investment will also enable the venture to develop world class digital products and mobile games with high fidelity and network play, strengthening the company’s deep tech stacks in new technologies like AI, Blockchain, AR/VR/MR and quantum computing. This will further deepen JetSynthesys’ presence in global e-sports, and help the company create large global IPs and forge new strategic partnerships with gaming powerhouses across leading markets like Japan, United States and Europe.

Kris Gopalakrishnan, non-executive chairman, JetSynthesys, opined, "We have several initiatives in gaming, content, digital commerce, mindfulness and fintech which are seeing increased traction during Covid times. Our international business with global partners is also seeing increased traction. This funding will allow us to invest more in sales and marketing as well as scale up operations.”

With gaming, social communities, digital entertainment becoming essentials in this new normal, Rajan tells us that engagement measures and revenue have gone up by as much as 150-200 percent and 50-70 percent respectively across some of JetSynthesys platforms.

Kickstarting this growth phase, JetSynthesys recently launched ‘WWE Racing Showdown’, in an exclusive partnership with WWE. A one-of-its-kind, high-octane, vehicular combat game that claims to feature the best of mobile action, sports, and racing.

JetSynthesys’ gaming arm is behind creation of games like Sachin Saga Cricket Champions, Sachin Saga VR and other cricket engine games that have over 20 million downloads. Other game titles include Being Salman, Super Ludo and game development and publishing partnerships with the likes of Hollywood film ‘Passengers’ and Floyd Mayweather, cumulative downloads have crossed 30 million.

In addition to developing cutting edge and popular games in-house, JetSynthesys co-founded e-sports company Nodwin Gaming. Nodwin has scaled up with massive expansion in the e-sports space and grown to about Rs 100 crore in revenues in just 4 years.

The funds will also go into further developing and building JetSynthesys’ captive social destination arm which boasts of popular names, prominent ones being 100MB, a first-of-its-kind digital destination born out of an exclusive joint venture with Sachin Tendulkar, and ThinkRight.me, India’s leading meditation and mindfulness app, digitally available in 43 countries. The venture claims ThinkRight.me has one of the highest conversion rate of downloads to subscribers, approximately 8 percent.

The gaming business is also set to launch new games in the casual and hyper casual segment in partnership with Japanese gaming studios in the near future.

JetSynthesys raises Rs 300 crore, deepens foray into gaming, digital entertainment & social community platforms

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