Mumbai, Dec. 15 -- The Netherlands-headquartered Prosus' India thesis is paying off in quick succession, and the global consumer-internet investor is now gearing up to deploy more patient capital across consumer internet, artificial intelligence (AI) and fintech, senior executives told Mint. The clearest proof point is Meesho-where Prosus is among the largest institutional backers-as the company's strong market debut at an over 53% premium has sharply boosted the value of its investment and strengthened its confidence in India as a long-term growth market. On Wednesday, Meesho's share price ended the listing day at Rs.170.45 on the National Stock Exchange, a 53.6% premium to the initial public offering (IPO) price of Rs.111. The company shed over 1% of its gains on Thursday, with its market capitalization at Rs.75,942 crore, or $8 billion. With an 11.2% stake in the mass market online retailer, Prosus has struck gold. The firm that enjoys the reputation of having evergreen capital is in no hurry to sell. It had all started with a cold email to the Meesho founders. "I had heard of them and wanted to meet them. In early 2018, I first met them and was impressed with the business they were building," said Ashutosh Sharma, head of India Ecosystem at Prosus. His firm first invested in Meesho, a reseller back then, in 2019. Prosus then followed it up, actively participating in Meesho's funding rounds through 2019 and 2024. Prosus helped the company transform from a social commerce firm to a high-scale e-commerce one. "Over a period of time, what we were increasingly more convinced about was this team's strategic vision of solving commerce for the next 300-500 million users, and they kept on taking the right calls just to enable that, which meant that the going direct to the consumer, pivoting from a WhatsApp, and I would not even call that a pivot," said Saurav Jain, principal investor, India Ecosystem, at Prosus. "It was more of a going vertical into catering to the same set of target group but going direct to them, rather than going via the reseller model,"Jain added. And this gives the firm the confidence to hold on to its investments further. "We didn't want to sell in Meesho. We did some (sell through an offer for sale in the IPO) only to meet the regulatory requirements," said Sharma. In the last 12-18 months alone, the firm has seen four of its key portfolio companies such as Swiggy, Bluestone, Urban Co. and Meesho listing on Indian bourses. At the close of trading on Thursday, the firm is likely sitting on $3.95 billion in gains. Other companies such as Rapido, PayU, Vastu Housing, Mintifi, Captain Fresh are also lining up IPOs over the next 12-18 months. Prosus counts around 32 firms in its India portfolio....