The Netherlands-listed international internet assets arm of South African group Naspers holds stakes in several Indian unicorns including food delivery and quick commerce firm Swiggy, edtech companies Byju’s and Eruditus, and ecommerce startup Meesho. The group’s global investments span major categories of food delivery, quick commerce, ecommerce, edtech and fintech.
Prosus said the core food platforms of the group continued to grow strongly, with the entity now extending their growth prospects through initiatives such as quick commerce.
“Our food platforms continued to grow strongly at the core of the food delivery business and are now investing to extend that growth through new initiatives such as quick commerce,” Prosus said in an investor presentation on Monday.
It said Swiggy contributed to $212 million of its almost $3 billion food tech revenue.
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Overall losses for Prosus’ foodtech arm were $724 million in FY22, on account of expansion into quick commerce by its investee companies. At present, Prosus holds a 33% stake in Swiggy. It invested $299 million in the food-tech company in the previous fiscal year.
According to Prosus, its share of Swiggy’s revenue is calculated on the basis of Prosus’ effective stake and the food-tech company’s revenue as of December last year, which is then multiplied for 12 months.
“Our share of Swiggy’s revenue for FY22 grew 57% to $212 million, while losses increased to $100 million driven by expansion into QC (quick commerce),” Prosus said.
Food and quick delivery platforms that are part of the Prosus group includes Brazilian online food delivery platform iFood and German multinational food delivery service Delivery Hero.
Prosus said Swiggy had recovered fully from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as it focused its efforts on reactivating users, increasing monthly frequency, and returning user conversion to pre-Covid-19 levels.
“This strategy paid off as restaurants on Swiggy’s platform increased 110% compared to pre-Covid-19 levels. This has driven orders and GMV (gross merchandise value) 26% and 68% higher than pre-pandemic levels, with GMV’s quicker rate being due to an improved AOV. (average order value),” Prosus said in the presentation to investors.
It added that Swiggy’s quick commerce business Instamart had seen a 10-fold jump in daily orders.
During the last financial year, Prosus continued to increase its exposure to Indian startups and invested over $1.03 billion, doubling down on existing and new bets including Swiggy; edtech majors, Byju’s and Eruditus; e-pharmacy platform, PharmEasy; ecommerce venture, Meesho; business-to-business ecommerce venture, ElasticRun and beauty marketplace, The Good Glamm Group.
Prosus also said its overall revenues from edtech grew to $425 million in FY22, on account of demand growth for online learning from its portfolio entities.
ETtechIts share of revenue from Byju’s grew by almost 90% year-on-year, driven by market expansion and enhanced offerings from the Indian edtech company. Prosus currently holds a 10% stake in Byju’s. It did not disclose the absolute revenue numbers.
The global internet group also operates its fintech arm PayU in India and online classifieds Olx.
It said total revenues for PayU globally grew by 45% year-on-year to $796 million for FY22, on the back of “strong performance in the India payments business and a strong recovery in credit”.
PayU India revenues stood at $304 million in FY22 driven by merchant diversification, Prosus said.
Further, total payment value (TPV) clocked during the year in India grew 66% to $43.8 billion.
Last year, PayU said it would merge with payments firm BillDesk in a $4.7 billion deal.
The deal has yet to be cleared by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and PayU has filed a revised merger notification seeking the competition regulator’s approval.
At present, PayU India’s lending business has 62 million users, with a total of 46,000 active merchants on the platform.
Prosus and Naspers also said on Monday that they intend to sell down their enormous stake in Chinese software giant Tencent to fund a share purchase programme.
