Amsterdam-listed e-commerce company Prosus and parent Naspers plan to lay off 30% of their corporate workforce; Prosus employed 30,000 globally in March 2022
Amsterdam-listed Prosus NV and its parent Naspers Ltd. are planning to cut their corporate workforce by 30%, becoming the latest global tech company to announce layoffs. Tweets: @oliviasolon Tweets: Olivia Solon / @oliviasolon : Prosus CEO says it is cutting 30% of staff from its corporate hubs. The e-commerce group employs 30,000 people in 80 countries, but says 15 offices will affected. Scoop from @LoniPrinsloo1 https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Prosus has been narrowing its footprint since the 2019 spin-off of Naspers' internet assets into the Dutch listing, and the pruning accelerated when it sold its JD.com stake as non-core in mid-2022. The 30% corporate-headcount cut, affecting 15 offices across the 80 countries where the group employs 30,000 people, extends that consolidation from the balance sheet to the corporate center itself, with management citing a more difficult macro environment.
First-order effects
- Staff at 15 corporate hubs face layoffs, with the cuts concentrated in shared corporate functions rather than the operating e-commerce businesses Prosus owns, including OLX Group.
Second-order effects
- The cost discipline runs alongside a reallocation of capital toward growth bets — a multi-year AWS cloud and AI contract and a raised stake-building push in India under CEO Fabricio Bloisi — signaling that savings from the corporate layer are being redirected into expansion in Europe, India, and Latin America.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the Naspers-Prosus holding structure keeps converging on a two-pillar model — the Tencent stake plus a smaller set of controlled e-commerce assets — rather than the broad venture-style portfolio it listed with in 2019, when its e-commerce arm excluding Tencent was still posting a $429M annual loss.
The trend: Listed tech holding companies are trading portfolio breadth for concentrated core assets, cutting central overhead while doubling down on a few growth markets.