Prosus joins top league of global investors after India's BillDesk buy

Naspers' digital investment arm now has India exposure of $10 billion

It was already sitting pretty by investing in six Indian unicorns, including edtech start-ups Byju’s and Eruditus, food and delivery giant Swiggy, home services platform Urban Company, social e-commerce platform Meesho, and online healthcare platform PharmeEasy, which recently bought diagnostic laboratory Thyrocare.  

On Tuesday Prosus NV, the international digital investment arm of South African conglomerate Naspers, took their India game a notch higher by snapping up payment gateway BillDesk for $4.7 billion through its fintech company PayU. Incidentally, this is the largest deal in the country’s online space since 2018, when Walmart bought Flipkart for $16 billion.

The quiet aggression of Prosus