For Garena’s Nick Nash, an IPO would not be the end-all

Nick Nash, group president of Garena

Garena is a consumer internet product provider with 17 million monthly active users on PC and 11 million on mobile. Group president of Garena Nick Nash says that China’s free-to-play games market is clocking in at nearly US$15 billion. This is something his firm hopes to capitalize on. Additionally, it aims to be the largest internet and mobile platform in Southeast Asia.

“Our vision for Garena is to be a synthesis, in a hyper-localized way, of some of the best pieces of Tencent and Alibaba,” says Nash on stage at Tech in Asia Singapore 2015. “We aspire to be a platform that includes communication tools and games just like Tencent, and also payments and other related services just like Alibaba.”

Approaching critical mass

You may recognize Garena as the platform that offers game titles like League of Legends, Path of Exile, and FIFA Online. In March, Garena attracted an undisclosed round of funding led by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), which brought the firm to a reported valuation of US$2.5 billion. “They saw [in us] a company with a willingness and desire to stitch together all of ASEAN,” explains Nash.

According to Nash, Garena operates on four key pillars: communication tools, games, mobile social networks, and payments. Garena + is the firm’s game and social platform for people to meet, chat, and play games with each other.

See: Top games publisher Garena launches venture arm

“Today, we have over 100 million users on Garena +,” says Nash. “Although we’re headquartered in Singapore, we’ve worked very hard to build a truly regional business across greater Southeast Asia. Singapore is an important market for us, but in revenue terms, Thailand and Taiwan are each actually a bit bigger.”

An IPO doesn’t have to be an exit

Garena’s revenues have grown over the past five years to more than US$200 million. According to Nash, Garena has elected to raise capital every nine months as the business grows in value with the operational demands of running it. When asked about whether or not Garena was approaching IPO territory, Nash said:

An IPO should never be the goal. It should never be an exit point, but rather another financing event […] Our shareholders believe in our long-term strategy, and consequently none of them have asked for a complete liquidity event.

Nash also spent some time talking about other emerging markets like Myanmar, where Garena’s BeeTalk chat app is used by roughly half of all the nation’s mobile users. According to Nash, Garena will be doing some real interesting things in Yangon in the next month or two, so stay tuned.

This is part of the coverage of Tech in Asia Singapore 2015, our event running on May 6 and 7.