Info Edge, the parent company of Naukri.com, has made successful long-term investments in Indian startups like Zomato and Policybazaar. These investments have brought huge returns, nearly 10 times the initial amount, with an estimated annual return of 36%, according to the company’s FY25 yearly letter to shareholders.
The company, led by Sanjeev Bikhchandani, often called India’s Warren Buffett, has invested a total of ₹3,959.16 crore in various platforms over the past 15 years.
This investment is worth ₹36,855 crore at its current market value.
“Since we started our financial investing activity in 2007, we have achieved an estimated 36 per cent gross IRR across all vintages put together,” founder and vice chairman Sanjeev Bikhchandani wrote in the letter.
Info Edge was among the first investors in Indian companies like Zomato and Policybazaar. It invested ₹483.78 crore in Zomato and ₹591.40 crore in Policybazaar.
The value of its shares in both companies is over ₹31,500 crore combined.
The total market value of Zomato and Policybazaar together is more than ₹2.5 lakh crore.
After these, Info Edge invested in several startups, including the men’s grooming brand Ustra, the B2B e-commerce platform Shopkirana, the edtech platform Adda247, the inter-city bus travel platform Zingbus, and the travel tech platform ixigo, among others.
To date, it has backed 111 companies.
In 2019, it rolled out a SEBI-registered AIF venture capital fund, Info Edge Venture Fund. Spread over three funds, it has a total corpus of ₹3,422.94 crores, of which Info Edge has committed Rs 1,613.75 crore.
“We first started investing in early-stage technology startups around 18 years ago in 2007. This investing activity today contributes to an estimated 30-40 per cent of the value of the company if analyst reports are to be believed – second only to the contribution of Naukri.com,” he wrote.
He said creating value by investing in tech-driven startups is scalable, sustainable, and repeatable. This gives the company an advantage as a tech-focused business that very few others have.
Bikhchandani founded Info Edge in 1995, making it one of India’s oldest internet-based companies. It operates in various sectors, including recruitment (Naukri), real estate (99 acres), matrimony (Jeevansathi), and education (Shiksha).
Info Edge’s journey as a financial investor has happened in four key phases, starting with its first investments between 2007 and 2012. This period helped lay the groundwork for two of its biggest successes.
“The first phase was from 2007 to 2012. Zomato and Policybazaar have been breakout successes of this period from over half a dozen investee companies,” he said. “The second phase was from 2012 to 2015. We treaded cautiously in this period as the winners from Phase 1 were yet to emerge.”
The third phase was from 2016 to 2019, once it became clear that Zomato and Policybazaar would be winners. “Companies that we invested in during this period include Adda247 and Shipsy among others. These are all companies at varying stages of maturity, but we remain optimistic that some of these will emerge as multi-baggers for us,” he said.
Many of these companies have raised more funds at higher valuations from well-known investors like Westbridge Capital, Google, Peak XV Partners, A91 Partners, and others.
Most successful companies are well-funded, have enough resources to grow, and eventually go public.
“The fourth phase of our early stage investing journey began in 2019 when we decided to set up a venture capital fund, namely Info Edge Venture Fund (IEVF) in the form of a SEBI-registered AIF vehicle. We have since invested through three different funds (i.e., IEVF, Info Edge Capital and Capital 2B) across four schemes,” he said.
In addition to Info Edge’s investment of ₹1,613.75 crore in these funds, MacRitchie Investments Pte Ltd, a fully owned subsidiary of Temasek Holdings, has also committed ₹1,593.75 crore.
“Apart from the AIF funds, we also began to invest with a small pool of money in early-stage deep tech companies through a wholly owned subsidiary of Info Edge named Redstart Labs (India) Ltd,” he said.
“While the AIF vehicles are still relatively nascent (early stage investing usually needs 7-8 years for promising companies to achieve meaningful scale in revenue and market share), several portfolio companies are already showing early promise with strong revenue growth, break even/profitability, leadership in their space and follow-on funding led by new external investors.”
Portfolio companies like TrueMeds, Genie Mode, Attentive.ai, Aftershoot, Mirana, Osfin, InPrime, and others have received additional investments from well-known investors such as Accel, Peak XV, Matrix, Westbridge, Tiger Global, Multiples PE, Fundamentum, Vertex, Left Lane, and more.
The biggest investment by Info Edge Capital, Bluestone Jewellery and Lifestyle Pvt Ltd, has received follow-up investments from Prosus (part of the Naspers group), Peak XV, and Steadview Capital.
Bluestone has also filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus with SEBI and is planning an IPO soon.
“We have invested in 111 companies across the years, not including investments in startups in the spaces that Info Edge has operating businesses. Out of these, 76 companies have institutional co-investors/follow-on investors,” he added.
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