Nazara's founder steps back after 27 years. Meet the gaming company's new team

Picture Mumbai in 1999. That year, Nitish Mittersain started a gaming company called Nazara. Today, its shares are bought and sold on the stock market.

For 27 years, he has helped lead it. Now he is stepping back. On October 12, 2026, Nazara's board approved his move out of the managing director role. Shareholders still have to say yes too. Here is what is changing, and why, in simple words.

First, what is Nazara?

Nazara Technologies is a gaming company from India. It owns and runs games and gaming businesses. Its well-known names include the WCC games, and it has bought companies like Sportskeeda, as Entrepreneur India reports.

In 2021, Nazara went public. That means anyone can now buy small pieces of the company, called shares, on the stock market. It is a bit like a society where many families own one flat each in the same building.

Who is the boss? It is a little like a cricket team

Big companies have a few top jobs. Here is an easy way to think about them:

The board is like the team selectors. A small group that makes the big decisions.
The CEO (chief executive officer) is like the captain. This person runs the team every single day.
The MD (managing director) is a top boss who is also on the board, and works full time in the company.
A non-executive director sits on the board and gives advice, but does not run things day to day. Think of a senior player who now helps from the dressing room.

Nitish Mittersain held both the CEO and MD jobs. Now he is letting go of both, one by one.

A timeline grows from left to right: 1999 started in Mumbai, 2021 shares start selling on the stock market, September 1 2026 a new CEO takes charge, October 12 2026 the board says yes to the founder stepping back as MD — Nazara's big moments, from 1999 to now

Step one: a new captain

In August 2026, Nazara said Mittersain would stop being CEO from September 1. He told the board it was "the right time to strengthen its leadership structure with a dedicated CEO."

The new CEO is Raymond Albaladejo Stauffer. He founded Bluetile, a mobile game maker based in Barcelona, Spain. He took over as CEO on September 1.

Step two: the founder moves to an advice role

Now Mittersain is also stepping down as managing director. His new title will be founder and non-executive director. According to Entrackr, he will keep giving "strategic guidance to the company." Strategic guidance means advice on the big picture, like which way the company should grow.

The board made a few more changes on the same day:

Mithun Sacheti, who started the jewellery brand CaratLane, will become a whole-time director for five years. He will look after special projects and some daily work.
Nazara gets a new CFO (chief financial officer), the person who looks after all the money. Arun Agrawal takes the job from October 16, 2026. He replaces Rakesh Shah, who had been CFO since 2010.

Why is the new boss from a Spanish game studio?

This is where the story gets interesting. Bluetile makes casual games. These are simple games you can play for a few minutes at a time on your phone. According to InvestGame, it was started in 2019 and runs 17 games, like Yatzy, Mahjong Voyage and Domino Legends. About 22 million people play its games every month.

In March 2026, Nazara agreed to buy half of Bluetile and a sister company called BestPlay. The starting price was $100.3 million. There could also be up to $98.2 million more later, as an earn-out. An earn-out is extra money paid only if the business hits certain targets later. It is like telling a friend, "I will pay you ₹50 for your bat now, and ₹20 more if you score a fifty with it."

Then the plan changed. Nazara decided to buy all of both companies at once, for a fixed $303 million. It paid $89 million at the start. The rest is due in parts by April 1, 2027.

On the left, half a circle fills yellow for 100.3 million dollars as the starting price for 50 percent. An arrow points right, where a full green circle fills for 303 million dollars as the fixed price for 100 percent — From buying half to buying the whole thing

Why does this matter so much? Bluetile and BestPlay together made nearly ₹1,400 crore in sales in 2025. From April to June 2026, the two together made more in sales than the whole of Nazara did, according to InvestGame. So the person who built Bluetile is now running the whole company.

Nazara also approved raising ₹733.5 crore by selling new shares to the founders and senior leaders of Bluetile and BestPlay, including Stauffer. If it all goes through, the new boss will own a piece of the company he runs.

Here is a news report on that money raise and the bigger plan:

Watch on YouTube

The money check

Companies share their results every three months. Each of these three-month blocks is called a quarter.

From April to June 2026, Nazara had a loss of ₹82.47 crore. A loss means it spent more than it earned. In the same three months a year before, it had made a profit of ₹51.34 crore.

Its revenue, which is all the money coming in from customers, was ₹428.77 crore. That was 14% lower than a year before. InvestGame says a big reason is that Nazara no longer counts the sales of NODWIN Gaming, an esports company, as its own.

Hear it from the founder

In this clip, Mittersain talks about why he wanted to take Nazara public:

Watch on YouTube

What happens next?

Shareholders still need to approve the founder's new role and Sacheti's new job. After that, Nazara will be run by a team that is very different from the one that took it public in 2021.

For anyone who dreams of starting a company, this story shows something worth knowing. A founder does not always stay captain forever. Here, the founder handed the captain's job to someone else, and is moving to a seat where he gives advice.

Sources

You may republish this story under CC BY 4.0: credit Arshdeep Singh and link to this page.