Fabricio Bloisi, chief executive officer of Prosus NV, during a Bloomberg Television interview in London, UK, on Monday, Oct. 21, 2024. We are going to re-imagine e-commerce through AI and I am confident that Prosus will contribute quite a lot in emerging market services, Bloisi said. Photographer: Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bloisi is betting the $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 in 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 June 30, 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.
The deal for Just Eat may also push Europe’s fragmented and struggling delivery industry toward consolidation. DoorDash Inc., which controls two-thirds of the US restaurant delivery market, offered to buy UK-based Deliveroo Plc 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.
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 1 000 engineers in Brazil and India, and wants to hire just as many in Europe.
