When Sea, the gaming-to-e-commerce-to-digital-payments company, announced its latest results, one thing was clear. Garena, its gaming business, was still doing the heavy-lifting.
It raked in US$369.7 million—a 113.2% year-on-year increase in revenue—in the quarter ended March 2020. In the same period, Sea’s e-commerce arm, Shopee, and its digital payments division, SeaMoney, brought in combined revenues of US$266.5 million.
Three years ago, the company made a conscious decision to rebrand as it readied for an IPO. Previously called Garena, it settled on Sea, an acronym for Southeast Asia—which revealed its sprawling ambitions beyond its home country of Singapore.
Game plan
Swallowed in the Sea, Garena’s still making waves
Sea Ltd has played up its e-commerce and fintech ambitions, but its gaming arm, Garena, has been the key revenue driver. With its hit mobile game Free Fire, Garena is looking to ride the emerging markets’ gaming appetite to greater heights
Despite rebranding from Garena to Sea in 2017, it’s the company’s gaming division—Garena—that’s steering it through Covid-19
Garena raked in US$369.7 million in the quarter ended March 2020, a 113.2% year-on-year increase, while its other divisions brought in US$266.5 million combined
Garena’s smash-hit battle royale game Free Fire crossed $1 billion in lifetime revenue in 2019 and hit a record 80 million daily active users in May
Now, with its latest acquisition of Canadian video game developer Phoenix Labs, Garena is looking to cement its position in the industry
