Prosus has agreed to invest $100 million in Navi, the Bengaluru-based financial services group founded by Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal, marking the first time Navi has taken outside institutional capital since it was built. The deal, structured through Prosus subsidiary MIH Payments Holdings, still needs regulatory clearance, including sign-off from India’s Competition Commission.
Navi runs UPI payments, ranking as India’s fourth-largest UPI app, alongside its NBFC lending arm Navi Finserv, which carried more than 130 billion rupees in assets under management during the last fiscal year, plus insurance and mutual fund products. The company also says it reached consolidated profitability in its fourth fiscal quarter. What makes the deal notable for the wider lending market is less the dollar figure than the fact that a founder-controlled, already-profitable Indian lending platform chose to take outside capital at all, after years of funding itself and growing organically. That is a reversal other well-capitalized Indian NBFCs are likely to face pressure to explain if they continue avoiding external investors while international capital increasingly treats profitable, licensed lending platforms as an entry point into the Indian market rather than a bet on unproven growth.
“We are excited about our partnership with Navi, a business that is demonstrating all the qualities we look for while investing,” said Ashutosh Sharma, head of Prosus India investments and M&A. Sachin Bansal, Navi’s founder and executive chairman, said: “Prosus is one of the world’s most respected investors, with an exceptional track record.”
The deal lands alongside other cross-border moves into emerging-market embedded finance, including card networks extending credit access in Africa and prepaid platforms expanding into full banking, part of a pattern of global capital and infrastructure providers treating emerging-market digital finance as investable rather than experimental.
Source: Prosus
