Latest news with #Prosus-backed
The Print
4 days ago
- Business
- The Print
BRISKPE plans to add payments infra for small cooperative banks, SFBs
The PAYU-backed BRISKPE received RBI approval for facilitating cross-border payments early this year. The RBI's in-principle approval for both export and import cross-border payments will be instrumental in driving this growth as the company can offer a digital-first, fully compliant import payment solution, Sanjay Tripathy, CEO and Co-founder, BRISKPE, said. Mumbai, Jul 12 (PTI) Cross-border payments platform BRISKPE plans to add payments infrastructure for small cooperative banks and small finance banks as it aims to more than 1 lakh international transactions per month by the next fiscal-end, a top company official said. BRISKPE plans to add payments infrastructure for small cooperative banks and small finance banks thereby creating a one-stop ecosystem that supports MSMEs throughout their global trade journey, Tripathy said. Global investment firm Prosus-backed BRISKPE aims to facilitate over 1,00,000 international transactions per month by next financial year end. Currently, the platform receives 50 per cent of its revenue from small B2B goods exporters. The increase in monthly transactions will help the company to diversify its revenue with new value-added services and drive strong, sustainable growth, the CEO said. PTI HG MR MR This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
Time of India
26-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Digital lenders stay cautious; Swiggy sees no easy wins for Rapido
ETtech Academy Empower your mind, elevate your skills ETtech Company Images Agencies Reach a highly engaged audience of decision-makers. Boost your brand's visibility among the tech-savvy community. Custom sponsorship options to align with your brand's goals. AP Happy Thursday! Some digital lending startups reported modest profit growth in FY25, while others have pulled back on IPO plans. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch.■ Ride-hailing GST ruling under review■ Infosys' Nilekani flags global risks■ NPCI reports 42% profit surgeDigital lending startups closed FY25 with mixed results . While some posted profit growth, others slowed down disbursals to maintain capital buffers in a volatile regulatory reported a 100% rise in net profit to Rs 100 crore for FY25. KreditBee posted a modest increase, with net profit reaching Rs 221 crore versus Rs 200 crore a year earlier. Axio, on the other hand, saw pressure on its operating metrics during the first half of the executives told us that several digital lenders are preparing draft red herring prospectuses (DRHPs), but few are expected to list before early 2026. Many are looking to secure Sebi approvals in advance and time their public offerings around improved market sentiment — possibly post the festive say regulatory uncertainty has stabilised and asset quality is holding up. With improved metrics expected this fiscal, some lenders are hoping to hit the public markets early next year. Swiggy 's Majety on Rapido's food delivery pushSriharsha Majety, group CEO, SwiggySwiggy says it remains agile and ready to respond, as Prosus-backed Rapido prepares to enter a market with few Rapido finalising its entry into the food delivery market, Swiggy founder and group CEO Sriharsha Majety said the company remains ' super agile and paranoid ,' and won't hesitate to act if the market shows signs of disruption. It's noteworthy that Swiggy is an investor in at an investor event hosted by Prosus in London, Majety said the food delivery market has seen multiple entrants — Uber, Ola, Amazon, and ONDC — come and go, with only Swiggy and Zomato managing to survive and scale.'There were a dozen players in 2015… and we're still standing. Credit to us and Zomato. It's not easy to find an opening that's a home run,' he said. 'But if we see one, we'll be out there in weeks.'Swiggy holds a 15% stake in Rapido, and both companies share Prosus as a common investor. Rapido is offering significantly lower restaurant commissions compared to incumbents as it enters the AAR questions earlier tax exemption for Juspay platform, citing possible misrepresentation and transfer of Karnataka Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) has said it may revoke its 2023 ruling that exempted Namma Yatri from collecting GST on auto rides booked via its had originally secured the ruling on grounds that it offered a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform charging drivers a subscription fee — not a per-ride commission. Since then, Juspay has transferred Namma Yatri to a subsidiary, Moving Tech AAR says the ruling may no longer apply since the business has changed hands and the original applicant, Juspay, no longer owns the platform. The authority also hinted that the initial exemption may have been based on incomplete case could impact GST treatment across other ride-hailing platforms like Uber, Ola, and Rapido, all of which are seeking clarity from the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC).ETtech Top 5 and Morning Dispatch are must-reads for India's tech and business leaders, including startup founders, investors, policy makers, industry insiders and Reach out to us at spotlightpartner@ to explore sponsorship Nilekani, cofounder, InfosysAmid multiple global challenges and AI becoming unavoidable, Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani said that the ongoing tariff wars is pushing businesses to derisk sourcing and that the energy transition adds another layer of National Payments Corporation of India, which runs UPI, IMPS, AePS and BBPS, reported a Rs 1,552 crore surplus for FY25 — up 42% year-on-year — on revenues of Rs 3,270 and and generative AI are now becoming part of the large deals for LTIMindtree , although with slightly longer closure cycle than the traditional vendor consolidation projects, its new CEO Venugopal Lambu told bond investment platform IndiaBonds raised Rs 32.5 crore ($3.77 million) from investors, including founder Amit Rathi, former Delhivery CBO Sandeep Barasia, and Sanctum Wealth CEO Shiv Gupta, among others.■ Who is most at risk from the billions of leaked Facebook and Google passwords? ( Rest of World ■ Snake Venom, Urine, and a Quest to Live Forever: Inside a Biohacking Conference Emboldened by MAHA ( Wired ■ Here's a running list of all of Tesla's robotaxi mishaps so far ( The Verge
Time of India
23-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Dutch investor Prosus pegs IPO-bound Urban Company's fair value at $2.4 billion
Dutch technology investor Prosus has pegged the fair value of at-home services platform Urban Company at $2.4 billion, according to its FY25 annual report. The Gurugram-based firm is among several Prosus-backed Indian startups preparing to go public. Prosus Ventures holds a 6.8% stake in Urban Company, which recently filed a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for a Rs 1,900 crore initial public offering (IPO). The offer includes a primary issue of Rs 429 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of Rs 1,471 crore, through which early investors, including Accel , Elevation Capital, Tiger Global, and Vy Capital, will offload stakes. Over the past year, Urban Company closed multiple pre-IPO secondary transactions at a valuation of around $1.8 billion, ET reported. Another Prosus-backed company, omnichannel jewellery retailer BlueStone, is also gearing up for an IPO . As reported by ET on June 18, the private wealth management arms of 360 One and Centrum Wealth are in talks to facilitate secondary transactions worth Rs 300–350 crore in BlueStone. Both platforms are expected to sell the stakes to their clients ahead of the company's public market debut. The transaction is also likely to value BlueStone at around Rs 10,500 crore ($1.2 billion), about 30% higher than its last reported valuation of Rs 8,100 crore in August 2024, when it raised Rs 900 crore through a mix of primary and secondary funding from investors including Peak XV Partners and Prosus. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Meanwhile, ecommerce marketplace Meesho , where Prosus owns about 13%, is expected to file its DRHP in the coming weeks. The company recently completed a reverse flip to shift its domicile to India, a key regulatory requirement ahead of its IPO plans. The listing preparations come amid a broader trend of global investors seeking to partially monetise long-held Indian tech bets, amid signs of a gradual revival in IPO activity. Prosus has been among the most active foreign investors in India's startup ecosystem, with a portfolio spanning fintech, edtech, ecommerce, logistics, and consumer tech.
Mint
24-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
You've heard of LLMs. Prosus is building its own LCM for commercial smarts.
Dutch technology investment firm Prosus NV is building its own 'large commerce model" to help its portfolio companies do business better, according to a top company executive. 'We're showing our large commerce model how users are traversing our portfolio companies' applications," said Paul van der Boor, vice president of AI at Prosus. He explained it as taking the various touchpoints of a user's journey through an app—from opening the app to raising complaints to getting queries answered—and using all of them to create a model that contains 'commercial intelligence". 'When you have a model like that, that is created on a subset of users' interactions with an app, there are other group companies that can use that model to understand how to better help that customer," said Boor. 'We're trying to learn commercial intelligence based on all the interactions we can piece together. So when a new interaction comes in, we can predict what happens there." Prosus has already begun testing this model with iFood, the Brazilian food delivery startup that was earlier led by Prosus's new chief executive officer Fabricio Bloisi, and OLX, a classified advertising company. Boor expects lessons learnt from implementing the commercial intelligence model in Latin America and Europe will help Prosus' group companies. 'We've already done a couple of tests where we know it expands outside of food. The idea is that, at least today, in iFood, one model exists that can help with a whole range of tasks for their constituents," Boor said. Also read | Prosus to take PE style bets, India one of three focus areas AI in Prosus's portfolio companies Prosus sees the current version of its large commerce model (LCM) as akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT-2, which was released in 2019. 'We know we have a path to get to the GPT-4 level, so we're taking it step by step," Boor said. Going forward, the investment firm expects that both existing and new companies in its portfolio to have an AI-first approach. The shift comes alongside a more focused attitude towards investing as well since Bloisi took charge as CEO of Prosus 10 months ago. Prosus-backed Swiggy Ltd, for example, uses various AI models from the minute a user opens the app as the Bengaluru-headquartered company seeks to make its food-delivery and quick-commerce experience highly personalised—such as preferred foods, restaurants, and delivery time. 'We will encourage those use cases across our whole group of companies. We know it works because of iFood in Brazil, we've seen it in Poland, and we encourage it here in India and the other way around," Boor said. Also read | After lip-smacking Swiggy IPO, Prosus prepares for its next hit Beyond artificial intelligence Alongside its deeper investments in AI, Prosus expects a few other technology aspects to play a big role in its investment decisions. 'Agentic systems that can reason, that can do multiple tasks, and shop with or for you is a big thing. Our thesis is that agents will work for you to help you find what you need," said Boor. 'Second is that we expect all of the user interfaces to change as a result of multi-modality." Multi-modality allows people to use an app through text, voice and even pictures. Prosus expects voice to emerge as a big factor in user experience. Bengaluru-based e-commerce firm Meesho, for example, deploys several AI agents across the customer service workflow, including a voice bot for customer service that currently serves users in Hindi and English. 'We've already seen that in Brazil. It's similar to India because people there are naturally inclined to use AI. It offers a huge opportunity as one of the big factors and how to change the form factor of technology using AI," said Boor. Prosus's notable AI investments this year include participating in a $13.5 million funding round in Luzia, a Spanish AI-based personal assistant app, earlier this month; a $7.25 million seed check to another Latin American personal assistant app called Zapia; and leading a $54 million Series-B funding in Taktile, a decision automation platform. Prosus also closed its $1.7 billion acquisition of Despegar, a Latin American AI-first travel agency, this year. In India, the Dutch firm pumped in nearly $30 million into ride-hailing platform Rapido in February. Last year, Prosus invested $100 million in Mumbai-based Vastu Housing Finance Corp. Ltd and acquired a 10.65% stake for $80 million in supply chain financing startup Mintifi. Also read | Groww to acquire Prosus-backed Fisdom for around $150 million
Time of India
13-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
PayU gets final nod from RBI to process online business payments
Merchant payment company PayU has secured the final approval from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to operate as an online payment aggregator (PA). The RBI granted the licence on May 13. This comes more than a year after the Prosus-backed firm received the in-principle approval from the banking regulator to operate this business. It had started onboarding new merchants since then. PayU is a subsidiary of Prosus , which is the Netherlands-listed fintech arm of South African technology investor Naspers. 'As we move forward, we remain dedicated to building a resilient, compliant, inclusive, and innovation-driven institution—one that serves merchants of all sizes,' said a PayU spokesperson. PayU joins the likes of BillDesk , CCAvenue, Razorpay and Cashfree, which have all received the Online-PA licence from the central bank over the last one year. Zaakpay, which is run by MobiKwik, was one of the last major players to get this licence in April, 2025. Digital payments major PayU, one of the earliest online payment companies in India, was asked by the central bank to stop onboarding new merchants in 2022. Then again in 2023, ET reported that PayU's application for the PA licence was returned, and it was asked to apply afresh. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories The company then went on a reorganisation spree, selling off its Global Payments Unit to Rapyd for $610 million. It consolidated its India and Southeast Asia business under PayU India and appointed Anirban Mukherjee as its chief executive officer. Beyond payments, PayU offers credit services and also actively invests in emerging companies. While the firm faced a slowdown in business through 2022-23, it restarted onboarding new merchants in 2024. In the financial year 2024, PayU reported overall revenue of $444 million, an 11% jump from $399 million in the previous financial year. India contributed 46% of its overall revenues and 60% of its total payments value in the last fiscal.
