Info Edge sitting on nearly 10X gains by betting Rs 3,959 crore on Zomato, PolicyBazaar, Naukri, others

Info Edge sitting on nearly 10X gains by betting Rs 3,959 crore on Zomato, PolicyBazaar, Naukri and others

Naukri.com-parent Info Edge’s long-term bets on Indian startups is yielding blockbuster returns. The company has invested Rs 3,959 crore across platforms like Zomato, PolicyBazaar, and Naukri — a portfolio now valued at Rs 36,855 crore. That’s a staggering 9.3X return, delivering a gross internal rate of return (IRR) of 36 percent, according to the firm’s FY25 annual letter to shareholders.

“Since we started our financial investing activity in 2007, we have achieved an estimated 36 percent gross IRR across all vintages put together,” founder and vice chairman Sanjeev Bikhchandani wrote in the letter.

“Value creation through investing in tech-led and tech-enabled startups is scalable, sustainable and repeatable. It possibly gives us an edge as a tech operating company that very few others have in our field or otherwise,” he emphasized.

The company’s journey as a financial investor has played out over four distinct phases, beginning with its earliest bets between 2007 and 2012 — a period that laid the foundation for two of its biggest wins.

“Zomato and PolicyBazaar have been breakout successes of this period from over half a dozen investee companies,” Bikhchandani noted. The combined market capitalisation of these two firms now exceeds Rs 2.5 lakh crore, while Info Edge’s shareholding is valued at over Rs 31,500 crore as of March 31, 2025.

Caution defined the next phase (2012–2015), as Info Edge held back on new investments. “We treaded cautiously in this period as the winners from Phase 1 were yet to emerge. We continued to support the existing portfolio wherever merited and needed, while not making investments into any new companies,” Bikhchandani said.

By 2016, with clear signals that Zomato and PolicyBazaar would be long-term winners, Info Edge resumed deploying capital. “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,” the letter stated. Many of these startups have since raised capital from top-tier investors such as Google, Westbridge, and Peak XV.

In 2019, the company institutionalised its efforts by launching the Info Edge Venture Fund (IEVF), along with Info Edge Capital and Capital 2B, under a SEBI-registered AIF vehicle – Info Edge Venture Fund. The three funds have a combined corpus of Rs 3,422.94 crore, with Info Edge committing Rs 1,613.75 crore and Temasek’s MacRitchie Investments putting in Rs 1,593.75 crore.

Parallelly, Info Edge began placing deep-tech bets through its subsidiary Redstart Labs. While these AIF-backed ventures are still early, the company said “several portfolio companies are already showing early promise with strong revenue growth, breakeven/profitability, leadership in their space and follow-on funding led by new external investors.”

These include companies like TrueMeds, Geniemode, Attentive.ai, Aftershoot, Mirana, Osfin, InPrime, among others, which have received follow-on investments from investors like Accel, Peak XV, Matrix, Westbridge, Tiger Global, Multiples PE, Fundamentum, Vertex, Left Lane and others.

So far, Info Edge has backed 111 companies — excluding startups in sectors where it has operational businesses — with 76 of them raising capital from institutional co-investors. Among them is Bluestone, the largest investment from Info Edge Capital, which has filed for an IPO and has attracted capital from Prosus, Peak XV, and Steadview Capital.