Afrigather Egyptian e-sports platform GBarena introduced on Monday that it has acquired the Tunisian gaming startup, Galactech. The acquisition, in accordance with Forbes Middle East, is a share swap deal value round $15 million. Share swap, in any other case referred to as stock-for-stock, refers to a deal whereby the possession of the shares within the goal firm (Galactech) are transformed into the possession of the shares within the buying firm (GBarena) as per a predefined swap ratio. This implies, GBarena is shopping for Galactech with a portion of its shares.
Although Galactech’s valuation wasn’t revealed, GBarena was reported to get pleasure from a valuation of $45 million. Based on its web site, the e-sport platform has over 650,000 customers throughout 27 international locations, together with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE.
Based in 2015 by Samer Wagdy and Mustafa Zaza, GBarena prides itself because the pioneering e-sport platform within the MENA area, with a mission to attach all e-sport stakeholders in MENA and your complete world.
“This acquisition is one step ahead in direction of reaching the corporate’s imaginative and prescient, which is to be the main aggregator in MENA, serving all stakeholders within the business,” mentioned Wagdy, CEO of GBarena.
Leveraging Galactech’s already-built enterprise rails, this acquisition is predicted to assist GBarena acquire floor in Riyadh, Dubai, and Tunisia. Galactech will even have the ability to faucet into each GBarena’s established consumer base and sources to strengthen its presence within the area,” mentioned Houcem Maiza, Galactech founder and CEO, who has now joined GBarena as co-CEO.
Galactech, based in 2016, has 200,000 energetic customers and has raised $1.5 million from three rounds from OTF, OQAL angels, and the Younis Household Workplace in Tunisia.
Eight-years-old GBArena has raised $700,000 from two rounds and an undisclosed third funding spherical from AUC Angel and La French Tech, and an undisclosed assist from the Egyptian Ministry of Communication. Forbes reported that GBarena is predicted to shut its Sequence A funding spherical later this 12 months.
The gaming business has recorded an astronic progress over the previous three years, because of the intervention of the COVID-19 lockdown. Based on a Research and Markets report, the cell gaming market is predicted to witness a compound annual progress price of 12.6% from 2021 to 2026. The gaming business is rising within the MENA area, a Redseer report says, and the gaming market in MENA is predicted to surpass $5 billion by 2025, rising by 19% from 2019, with Saudi Arabia and the UAE main progress ranges.
GBarena mentioned it’s eyeing extra acquisitions of gaming studios and platforms, particularly within the fields of Web3 and AI.
That is the second publicly introduced merger and acquisition (M&A) this month in Africa, and the second for Tunisia and the Maghreb area, following BioNTech’s $686.5 million acquisition of Instadeep.
