Dutch e-commerce company Prosus plans to sell its Russian online marketplace Avito to Kismet Capital for ~$2.46B; Avito was valued at ~$6B before Russia invaded
Context & Ripple Effects
Prosus's sale of Avito closes a chapter Naspers opened a decade ago: the $1.2B majority-stake acquisition in 2015, followed by the $1.16B investment in 2019 that pushed ownership above 99% at a $3.85B valuation. After the invasion, Prosus moved fast on its Russian exposure — writing off its $769M VK stake and announcing in May 2022 it would exit Russia entirely and seek a buyer for Avito.
The ~$2.46B price from Kismet Capital lands well below the ~$6B analysts assigned Avito before the war, making this one of the clearest price tags yet on what foreign ownership of Russian internet assets is now worth. It also follows the same playbook as Yandex's planned ~$5.2B sale of its entire Russian business to a management-led group.
First-order effects
- Prosus converts its announced exit into cash at roughly 40% of Avito's pre-invasion valuation, ending a holding built up through more than $2.3B of Naspers-era investment.
- Kismet Capital takes over Russia's leading classifieds marketplace, adding a top consumer-internet asset to local ownership.
Second-order effects
- The discount-to-prewar-value template strengthens: with Yandex's ~$5.2B whole-business sale already in motion, remaining foreign holders of Russian digital assets face buyers who know sellers are exiting under pressure.
- Russian consumer-internet consolidation shifts toward domestic capital, as local vehicles like Kismet Capital become the default acquirers of assets Western investors can no longer hold.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Russia's internet sector completes a structural decoupling from foreign portfolio capital — assets repriced downward and transferred to domestic owners, reversing two decades of cross-border tech investment.
- For global listed tech groups with emerging-market stakes, the episode hardens the case for treating geopolitical exposure as a write-down risk rather than a long-term position.
The trend: Western tech investors are unwinding their Russian holdings through steeply discounted sales to domestic buyers, with Prosus's Avito exit and Yandex's full-business sale marking the same retreat.