Dutch tech investor Prosus (PRX.AS) plans to take Indian digital payments firm PayU public by 2025, said Chief Investment Officer Ervin Tu. The company had first hoped for a late 2024 listing but is now optimistic it might actually happen next year. The timeline change came as the company continued working with PayU to figure out when that might be.
PayU, fully-owned by South Africa’s Naspers, will be valued at between $5 billion and $7 billion. It recently ticked off a long-awaited goal after getting approval in April to operate as a payment aggregator after 15 months of regulatory wrangling. PayU competes with other major players such as Razorpay backed by Tiger Global and Walmart’s PhonePe. Lending services are also provided to the consumers and small businesses by PayU.
Tu said:
“We’re late into 2024 already, but we hope that it could be a 2025 event. We’re still working with the company to firm the best timing.”
Dutch tech investor Prosus sees great potential in India to invest
India’s digital payments industry is an area the company doesn’t lack confidence in, even with the delay in PayU’s IPO. The retail digital transactions increased by 44% in FY24, and overall payment volume grew by 20%, as per the annual report for the year 2024 of the company. Tu reiterated that India is at the core of Prosus’s growth strategy and has “great optimism about the future” for the region and the continued investments.
This comes amid another of Prosus’s key investments, in another listed firm, on Wednesday. Prosus made a tidy profit of $2 billion from Swiggy, the food delivery company, of which it owns 25%. Swiggy’s listing is among those that underpin Prosus’s confidence in its Indian tech portfolio; several are moving in this direction.
Last month, Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi said that he can be proved right in projecting more Indian companies in its portfolio to go public within the next 12 to 18 months. The list apart from PayU and Swiggy includes stakes in online marketplace Meesho and Urban Company, which provides home services. As part of its big bets on the rapidly evolving Indian digital economy, Prosus is backing India’s growth prospects with more IPOs across its diversified portfolio.
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