After lip-smacking Swiggy IPO, Prosus prepares for its next hit
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. A few months back, Prosus, one of the world’s largest technology investors, faced a debilitating condition in India. It wrote off its entire $500 million investment in Byju’s, six years after it first backed the edtech company once valued at $22 billion.
Last year, the Prosus representative on the board of Think & Learn, the parent company of Byju’s, had resigned citing poor governance standards. Ups and downs are commonplace among startups. It’s true for their backers, too.
Where edtech failed, foodtech thrived. On 13 November, the Netherlands-headquartered investor took home more than $500 million when it sold a fifth of its 31% stake in Swiggy, during the food delivery and quick commerce company’s initial public offering (IPO). Prosus’ balance stake is now down to 25%, which still means it is sitting on over $2.5 billion of gains, considering Swiggy’s current market capitalization of about $11 billion.
From the lows induced by Byju’s a while ago, the management team of Prosus in India now feels an adrenaline rush. “We invested around $650 million in Swiggy across rounds," Ashutosh Sharma, head of growth investments, India and Asia, Prosus, said, calling it the investor’s largest cheque in the country till date. “Swiggy will return more than all of our capital that is deployed," he added, visibly pumped up.
Prosus has invested $8.2 billion in India till-date across 24 big and small deals and is now getting ready to deploy more. “We have currently offered two term sheets of more than $100 million each to a marketplace company and a fintech firm. We are waiting to close the deal," Sharma said.
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