7Seas Tech acquires German gaming firm

7Seas Technologies, a Hyderabad-based gaming company, has acquired Neodelight, the gaming division of Germany-based Neokolor GBR, in an all-cash deal, for an undisclosed amount.

With this buyout, 7Seas will get the full IP rights to the Neodelight brand, games, game engine and its website.

Neodelight has developed 33 games, for which it owns the IP rights. These games are available on the world's largest gaming portal Miniclip and Adlabs' Zapak.

This acquisition is significant for the company as it gains in terms of game engine technology, according to L Maruti Sanker, managing director of 7Seas Technologies.

"Game engines play a vital role in developing games and reduce their developing cycle time by 50 per cent.

With Neodelight's game engine technology and its existing IP-owned games, we will now have 200 IP-owned games on our website by the end of this financial year. Besides, we will be in a position to develop 200 own games every year," he told mediapersons here on Thursday.

The start-up company plans to invest around $20 million (Rs 80 crore) over the next two to three years in developing own IP games content, scaling up headcount from the present 120 to 250, setting up an animation studio and intensifying digital and retail penetration.

"We would rely on internal accruals partly and plan to raise the remaining through a private equity placement for which we are in talks with a few PE firms," Sanker said.

7Seas Technologies is also looking at co-producing movie-based mobile 3D games and is currently in talks with a couple of Telugu film producers.

"Targeting the Nokia handsets that enable our Flash technology, we plan to launch our first mobile 3D game based on a Telugu film character by this year end. We expect to release Kraze, a multi-genre 3D PC racing game in the international market during the same time," he added.

Riding on the back of increasing traffic on its onlinerealgames portal and on its game licensing deals, the Rs 1-crore company expects to garner revenues of around Rs 6 crore this year and Rs 20 crore by 2009.