Netherlands-based tech investor Prosus, which has pumped close to $9 billion in Indian companies, has marked down its $38 million investment in beleaguered buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) fintech platform ZestMoney, the investment firm said in its annual report for the financial year ended 31 March, 2023.
An investor in unicorns like PharmEasy, Swiggy, Meesho, Byju's, Eruditus, and Urban Company, owned close to 19.44% stake in ZestMoney’s holding company, Primrose Hill Ventures Pvt. Ltd.
ZestMoney, which has raised capital from Zip, Ribbit Capital, Quona Capital, Xiaomi, Omidyar Network, and Goldman Sachs, is going through turmoil after its acquisition deal with PhonePe fell through due to concerns during due diligence.
Following the deal's fallout, its founders Lizzie Chapman, Priya Sharma, and Ashish Anantharaman called it quits.
In another instance, the investor also pointed out slowing growth of online food delivery aggregator Swiggy during FY22. It pegged its gross merchandise value at $2.6 billion for the year, up 13% y-o-y from $2.3 billion in the year before.
However, the company bettered its margins through FY23 as its revenue grew 40% y-o-y to about $925 million from $640 million in 2021. Prosus noted that Swiggy had a higher average order value and increased its revenue from delivery fees and advertising sales in 2022. The investor holds 32% in Swiggy.
“In the last two reporting periods, Swiggy has concentrated on reactivating users, increasing monthly frequency and improving user conversion,” Prosus said in its report.
It also added that Swiggy has over 272 000 enabled restaurants on its platform, which is 155% of the pre-pandemic levels.
However, on an overall level, the company’s loss widened by 80% to nearly $540 million in the calendar year 2022 from nearly $300 million in the year before, despite its food delivery business turning profitable in March 2023, after factoring all corporate costs excluding share-based costs.
