Nitish Mittersain started a gaming company in Mumbai in 1999, a year before the dotcom bust, when he was reportedly still a student.
The sources are thin on his childhood and family; they did not turn up, and I will not guess. What exists is a school and college trail from one aggregator bio, Bombay Scottish and then Sydenham College, and his own telling that he loved games from a young age. Nazara began as an online gaming portal. In India in 1999, that meant an audience that barely existed, on connections that barely worked.
The sources are thin on his childhood and family; they did not turn up, and I will not guess.
Then the bubble burst. In 2002 the company moved into mobile value-added services, selling games and content to telecom operators. It was a retreat that turned into a business.
What almost nobody saw coming was the long game. From 2015 Nazara licensed Chhota Bheem for mobile; in 2018 it took control of Nextwave and 55% of Nodwin Gaming; in 2019 it bought 67% of Sportskeeda for Rs 44 crore. SEBI cleared an IPO in 2018, but the company halted it. It listed on the NSE and BSE in March 2021.
The acquisitions kept coming: OpenPlay for Rs 186 crore, WildWorks, Comic Con India, and in 2024 a 47.7% stake in PokerBaazi's parent for Rs 832 crore. FY24 revenue was about Rs 1,138 crore with net income of about Rs 89 crore, though the sources disagree on the dollar equivalents.
In August 2026 reports said Mittersain was stepping down as CEO, with Raymond Stauffer named successor.
For a founder, Nazara is a lesson in what a pivot looks like when it is not a slogan. The first idea needed a world that had not yet arrived. Staying alive in a different business bought the years in which that world could show up.