Nazara bets on pent up demand for betting in India, invests in Mastermind

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Betting is illegal in India. Match-fixing scandals have rocked India’s favorite sport cricket repeatedly. So even private betting syndicates are frowned upon.

Nazara, a leading mobile games developer and publisher, is betting there’s pent up demand for one of the favorite activities of cricket lovers – making predictions and placing bets. With the hugely popular Indian Premier League of cricket under way, it has launched a live cricket prediction game, CricBet.

The game has live cricket scores to make it a companion for the ongoing daily league games. No real money and only virtual coins are used, of course, because betting is not allowed in India.

See: 8 cricket games to play

A deal with Mastermind Games

Photo credit: Pixabay.

This is not the first real-time cricket betting game. Last year, before the Cricket World Cup, Zootr had launched Matchup Cricket, which can also be played while watching live cricket on TV. Zootr merged with Mastermind last year. Pratik Shah, its founder, joined Mastermind as co-founder and CTO.

Nazara’s launch of CricBet follows a partnership with Bangalore-based gaming studio Mastermind Games, in which the Mumbai-based gaming company has picked up a stake. Mastermind Games is a creation of former London bookie Tom McCall, who decided to launch his new gaming company in Bangalore because of the city’s good supply of game and UX developers.

This is Nazara’s second investment this month. It co-invested in London-based gaming studio Truly Social before this, indicating a move towards becoming an active investor in the gaming ecosystem and a publisher of games from other studios.