Southeast Asia based mobile entertainment group iCandy Interactive Limited has entered into a termsheet to acquire the entire 100 per cent interest in Singapore-based Inzen Studio Ptd Ltd for S$6 million ($4.4 million).
However, the company said in the statement that the final value will be satisfied in ordinary shares of iCandy at an issuance price of five-day volume weighted average price of iCandy’s shares at closing of the transaction.
There will be no change in shareholding control of iCandy, it cited.
Inzen, a mobile game company and eco-system developer, had previously secured investments from Japan’s Incubate Fund, Singapore’s Hatcher and the Global Mobile Game Confederation in China.
Baidu Games, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Baidu Inc which one of top three largest internet companies in China with a current market capitalisation of $63.75 billion, had also invested and been a strategic partner with Inzen.
This acquisition is believed to provide iCandy new avenues to publish games in the lucrative smartphone games market in China.
In return, it will allow Inzen to leverage upon iCandy’s network of more than 17 million mobile-gamers in Asia Pacific for publishing as well as its studio network for mentorship, co-publishing and incubation initiatives.
Inzen’s founders are games industry veterans and were part of the core team at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab, set up to incubate the next generation of games industry talents in Singapore, fund research and develop breakthrough game prototypes for commercialisation.
Its chief executive Gerald Tock was the Head of Operations at Game Lab and had operated two previous indie-game companies from startup through to commercialisation including the indie-hit game, Toribash.