Proscorp cancels $4.7 billion BillDesk deal

In August, we covered Prosus after the Amsterdam-based Prosus made its biggest bet in the Indian tech space with a $4.7 billion acquisition of payments fintech startup BillDesk, making it one of the biggest players in the country's fast-growing fintech sector.

A month later, Prosus announced that it had terminated the $4.7 billion deal, saying conditions of the deal had not been met. On September 5, the Indian antitrust regulators approved the buyout deal despite concerns that the merger of BillDesk with Prosus-owned PayU would lead to concentration on India's payments market.

A spokesman for Prosus told Reuters that there was no break fee associated with the deal, but they refused to elaborate on the reasons for the cancellation.

Citi analysts said that the investors' pushbacks had been around the valuation and price being paid for BillDesk. We don't know if Prosus PayU could make another offer for BillDesk at a lower price. BillDesk was founded in 2000 as an Indian success story and one of the leading payment businesses in the country. PayU currently processes $55 billion in payments as of March 2021, a 51% increase from the previous year. India is a major focus for Prosus but the BillDesk deal is its biggest investment to date.

In April, we wrote about Prosus after the company had a windfall of $232 billion from its $32 million investment in Chinese gaming giant Tencent. Prosus, founded in 2019 by Naspers of South Africa, owns stakes in consumer internet companies, online marketplaces, fintech startups, educational software, and food delivery. Prosus also has stakes in some of the companies it has stakes in.

Naspers Ltd., Prosus's parent company, is Africa's largest listed company and a global consumer internet group, and one of the largest technology investors in the world. In 2001, Naspers made a successful investment of US $32 million for a 30.9% stake in Chinese gaming and social media giant Tencent before it went public.