Prosus terminates $4.7 billion acquisition of India’s BillDesk

Prosus has called off the $4.7 billion acquisition of BillDesk it announced last year, once slated as European technology giant's largest acquisition, saying "certain conditions precedent" were unfulfilled in a surprise move a month after the proposed acquisition received an approval to proceed from the local antitrust watchdog.

The proposed transaction will not be implemented due to certain conditions precedent being not fulfilled by the 30-09-2018 long stop date, according to a statement by Prosus.

The all-cash acquisition was slated to be the second largest M&A deal in the South Asian market. Many promised deals have fallen apart as a result of the market turning.

Prosus has lost a lot of value in the last year. In the last few months, it has sold stakes in other firms.

Prosus would have been able to take over the market of payments processing in India. Most of the Indian government departments rely on BillDesk to pay their bills. Prosus said at the time of the acquisition that the high price tag was justified because of the business's scale.

The payments market in India has shown cracks recently, according to a person familiar with the matter. It is not known if Prosus and BillDesk had an agreement for a fee. BillDesk did not reply immediately. According to three people familiar with the matter, the decision to end the deal came as a surprise to BillDesk's investors.

Why is the $4.7 billion PayU-Billdesk getting called off massive?

Because it was a CASH deal, which is rare in India internet

It would have meant a $1.4 billion payday for founders and over $3 billion for investors

Details here https://t.co/GI3UEkbaeU pic.twitter.com/GK1emNdVPW

— Madhav Chanchani (@madhavchanchani) October 3, 2022

BillDesk was founded by three consultants and had a goal of making $500 million from the acquisition. After January's funding round, it was valued at over 1.5 billion dollars.

BillDesk was going to file for an initial public offering prior to the Prosus deal. There are a lot of payments in India. They would have commanded more of the Indian market than their nearest competitor, according to estimates.

PayU India and BillDesk will be able to meet the changing payments needs of digital consumers, merchants and Government enterprises in India and offer state-of-the-art technology to even more of the excluded sections of society.