Investment group Prosus is still riding the wave of the blossoming tech market in India. The success of food delivery company Swiggy’s recent IPO, valued at $11.3bn, produced a gain of $2bn on Prosus’s total investment, according to its latest interim results.
“We are very excited about India,” said Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi during the 2025 half-year earnings presentation. “We made a good call to make India our priority. The Swiggy IPO is just the first big result, but we have many more ahead.”
Prosus announced five potential IPOs for the next 18 months, including PayU, Meesho and Bluestone. It also highlighted Eruditus, Captain Fresh, Mintifi, Vastu and Mensa as companies with “future potential”.
Old Mutual investment analyst Ian Woodley says: “Prosus wants to do something similar to Tencent in India.” India has a huge and broad market, and Prosus is willing to play the long game. “The new CEO has his handprint on operations. It wants only companies that will add value, not just for the sake of them being cheap or in the tech sector. It wants to be hands-on.”
India and the tech sector are viewed in a very positive light by investors, says Philip Short, portfolio analyst for Flagship Asset Management. “The single biggest factor driving the success of IPOs is market timing ... As a shareholder, you want the company to undertake its IPO in a bull market and hopefully when the backdrop of the sector is buzzing.” Short says that in the near term he would view this as an opportune time for the IPO of an Indian tech service company.
The Swiggy IPO is just the first big result, but we have many more ahead
— Fabricio Bloisi
PayU’s latest financial results show a solid 28% year-on-year growth in revenue but an increase in operating losses. This follows a year of slow growth due to “regulatory challenges in India”, according to Bloisi.
If successful, the global fintech company would expect to make more losses before reaching strong profits, says Short. “As a potential investor in a PayU IPO, I’d like to see evidence that the losses are becoming smaller, and that the standalone company has a strong-enough balance sheet and cash to grow the business.”
According to Woodley, PayU is not ready to list just yet. “It doesn’t make much sense right now. PayU does not have a proven track record yet. It will likely get underbid and you won’t get the value you want.”
Bloisi said Prosus will leave the announcement to PayU, so investors have to wait and see if the IPO materialises within the next 18 months.
Short says investment holding companies often take on significant risk with certain ventures, with the hopes that the successes will outweigh the losses. Prosus managed to balance its portfolio in India with successful investments like Swiggy, offsetting major losses such as that of education technology company Byju’s. Earlier this year Byju’s experienced a significant decline in its valuation, effectively to zero. At a fair value loss of $493m Prosus wrote off its 9.6% stake in the company in June.
Despite this, Prosus’s deal pipeline is very healthy, according to chief investment officer Ervin Tu. “We are going to reduce the risk of investing through investment analysis, but also by leveraging our ecosystem. And we are quite confident we will have good deals and good investments over the next six months.”
Bloisi emphasised Prosus’s goal to “unlock an AI-first world”. Prosus’s access to vast amounts of transactional data from its portfolio companies will help train AI models for “a better customer experience”.
Short says the competitive landscape for AI investment is intense, with tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta and Amazon investing heavily. “[Prosus’s] opportunity is in emerging markets, which, at this point, are less competitive.”
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