LONDON, UK: PayU Payments Private Limited (PayU), a subsidiary of Prosus N.V, has entered into an agreement with the existing shareholders of IndiaIdeas.com Limited (BillDesk) to acquire 100% of the equity in BillDesk.
The purchase consideration is INR 345bn (c. US$4.7 bn) on a cash-free, debt-free basis and subject to a normalised level of working capital at Closing. The Acquisition is structured as an all-cash transaction with the purchase price payable at Closing.
BillDesk, founded in 2000, is an Indian success story in the digital payments business, operating one of the leading payment platforms in India.
Together, PayU 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, while adhering to the regulatory environment in India and delivering robust consumer protection.
According to the FY21 annual report of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the number of transactions for digital retail payments has grown by more than 80% from 24 billion in 2018-19 to 44 billion in 2020-21.
Over the next three years, RBI expects more than 200 million new users to adopt digital payments with the average annual transactions per capita rising tenfold from 22 to 220.
PayU India and BillDesk run complementary businesses within India’s digital payment industry. Together, the two expect to create a financial ecosystem handling four billion transactions annually – four times PayU’s current level in India.
The value of the net assets that are the subject of the Acquisition as at 31 March 2021, being the date of the last year-end unaudited management accounts of BillDesk, was INR18 881 million (US$256.9 million).
This value largely reflects BillDesk’s cash and cash equivalents and the naturally asset light nature of its business model. The purchase price reflects Billdesk’s multi-year track record of strong revenue and profit growth as well as the expectation for continued strong future growth in a rapidly expanding India digital payments market.
The unaudited profit after tax attributable to the net assets that are the subject of the Acquisition for the year ended 31 March 2021, was INR 2 706 million (US$36.8 million), based on the unaudited management accounts of BillDesk, which were prepared in terms of Indian Accounting Standards.
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30 Aug, 5:14 pm GMT+2 ·Disclaimer
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