Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi was given a mandate when he started the role a year ago to find new growth and a cohesive strategy for the firm, a hodgepodge of investments in more than 100 companies spread across five continents.
Bloisi is betting the US$4.3-billion deal to buy Dutch food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway might kick off the shake-up that he says the European technology sector needs and put Prosus on track to creating super apps spanning on-demand services to create lifestyle experiences.
“Europe has very few big tech companies — the big food delivery companies are valued at about $4-or $5-billion — where as a similar company in America values at $80-billion, or China $120-billion,” Bloisi said in an interview this month. “That’s food delivery, but it’s the same for messaging or e-commerce or payments — Europe lacks a tech company compatible with its size.”
The 47-year-old, who took the job last July, is motivated to find a big new source of growth. He’s set to get a $100-million bonus if he’s able to double the company’s valuation by 30 June 2028. Just Eat, his biggest deal so far, will make Prosus the world’s fourth largest food delivery company by gross transaction value. The company also owns Brazil’s iFood and stakes in China’s Meituan, India’s Swiggy and Germany’s Delivery Hero.
Prosus is controlled by Naspers, a South African publisher formed in 1915 that transformed itself into global investor with a prescient early bet on China’s Tencent in 2001. That stake is now worth $136-billion. Naspers formed Prosus, which is listed in Amsterdam, chiefly as an investment vehicle. Bloisi runs both groups.
Outmuscled
The deal for Just Eat may also push Europe’s fragmented and struggling delivery industry towards consolidation. DoorDash, which controls two-thirds of the US restaurant delivery market, offered to buy UK-based Deliveroo for about $3.6-billion, the companies said Friday. Deliveroo, like many of its rivals in Europe, had struggled to maintain growth after an initial surge during Covid-19 lockdowns. The company planned to exit its the Hong Kong market where it was outmuscled by larger rival, Meituan.
Bloisi previously built iFood from a 20-person operation into Brazil’s largest online delivery company. His current plan is to style his business after Meituan, which offers customers a wide range of services, including on-demand food delivery, travel and entertainment. Since leading Prosus, Bloisi also acquired online travel agency Despegar for $1.7-billion.
Read: Prosus in blockbuster R79-billion Just Eat acquisition
The idea is to leverage food delivery apps for other services. The company’s starting with iFood, which does about 120 million deliveries per month. The division’s CEO, Diego Barreto, said the company plans to integrate the app with online travel agency Despegar and ticketing firm Sympla, another Prosus property.
“If a customer is ordering food from a different location to where he lives, there’s high probability that the customer is traveling, and that he will look for an experience,” said Bloisi. “We will use food as the basis of our ecosystems.’’
He also plans to build an artificial intelligence hub in Amsterdam, which will run the data through AI models, to integrate the company’s food delivery, payments, travel and e-commerce businesses in its separate European markets — similar to what it is doing in India and Latin America. The group employs about a thousand engineers in Brazil and India, and wants to hire just as many in Europe. — Loni Prinsloo and Yazhou Sun, (c) 2025 Bloomberg LP
Get breaking news from TechCentral on WhatsApp. Sign up here.