Global investment group Prosus eyes five India listings in 12-18 months

Global investment group Prosus has identified five Indian companies from its portfolio for an initial public offering (IPO) in the next 12–18 months.

 

Of these five, the Dutch investment group identified three firms — digital payments player PayU (fully owned by Prosus), e-commerce player Meesho, and omnichannel jewellery retailer BlueStone — that are likely to go public within this period, said senior executives in an analyst call on Monday while announcing its results for the first half of 2025.

 

While Prosus said that the exact timeline for the IPO announcements will come from the firms themselves, it also identified another five investee companies on its “future potential” IPO list.

 

These include edtech company Eruditus (valued at $3.1 billion), sustainable fish and seafood value chain builder Captain Fresh (valued at $800 million), supply chain financing company Mintifi (Prosus took a 10.65 per cent stake at a valuation of $750 million in October 2024), housing finance player Vastu (Prosus holds 8 per cent in the company, which has a valuation of $1.26 billion), and digital-first brands portfolio Mensa (valued at $967 million), among others.

 

Prosus has deployed over $8 billion in the country across more than 30 companies. It recently made a partial exit from Swiggy — the company invested $1.3 billion in the food delivery platform, which after the IPO has a current valuation of over $4 billion. However, it is still the largest shareholder in the company.

 

PayU has shown very good growth in India, with both the payment and the credit businesses performing well, company executives said in the call. However, in the first half of 2025, while revenues of PayU India went up by 28 per cent, its earnings before interest and tax margin fell by 8 per cent. The presentation said that it is at an inflexion point after earlier setbacks.

 

According to reports, the company is expected to be listed at a valuation ranging from $5 billion to $7 billion.

 

BlueStone, according to the latest data, is valued at $968 million as of September 2024. Meesho, in which Prosus has around a 13 per cent stake, is currently valued at $3.9 billion.

 

Prosus, which has been in India for a long time, has, however, made long-term investments in the country — with three exits: Make­MyTrip, Flipkart, and a partial exit from Swiggy. However, being fully owned by Prosus, PayU could provide them with attractive returns even after a partial disinvestment. If all three deals fructify, the company would double its record of partial or full exits from firms in India.

 

On the other portfolio firms, Prosus’ presentation highlighted that most of its investments are delivering on the internal rate of return (IRR), except for pharmacy startup PharmEasy.

 

PharmEasy’s IRR was a negative 38 per cent. Edtech startup Eruditus’ IRR was 14 per cent, the lowest positive return. Meesho’s IRR came in at 20 per cent, and PayU India’s IRR was at 21 per cent. The highest IRR was of ElasticRun at 23 per cent.

 

The company also added that a big focus for them is going to be India. “...We are going to crystallise the value of what we have, of our investments. And our big focus now is India,” said Fabricio Bloisi, chief executive officer of Prosus and Naspers, in the analyst call.

 

He also added that after the success of Swiggy’s IPO, the company now wants to replicate the same story. “This is the kind of story we have to replicate. And we will replicate much more inside Prosus. As you saw, we started investing in Swiggy when it was a small company in India. We invested many rounds in Swiggy, and we helped Harsha (Sriharsha Majety) and the Swiggy team deliver one of the most successful tech cases in India. We are very confident about the future of Swiggy,” he added.