The pull of Charles Searle and South Africa-based media group Naspers is evidenced by how Silicon Valley heayweights are prepared to attend the group’s strategy meetings.
Naspers’ corporate venturing unit, Myriad International Holdings (MIH), could be forgiven for being little known in the epicentre of global venture capital but its attraction is perhaps heightened because MIH’s focus is outside developed nations.
This means it influences more people and with better returns thananyone else and Searle, chief executive of the MIH Internet Group, sits at the heart of Naspers’ two most important portfolio companies – China-based media group Tencent and Russian peer Mail.ru.
Naspers owns 34% of Tencent, which has a market capitalisation of HK$485bn ($62.6bn), and a 28.7% stake in London Stock Exchange-listed internet company Mail.ru Group, which is Russia’s largest internet company with a market capitalisation of $6.8bn.
The latter was founded by Russian venture capitalist and entrepreneur Yuri Milner and, through him and Mail.ru, Naspers also indirectly owns chunks of some of America’s most successful start-ups, including social network Facebook, discount coupon provider Groupon, and messaging service Twitter.
However, MIH’s direct investments have gone into emerging markets, such as sub-Saharan Africa, south-east Asia, Latin America and India, where it recently backed Flipkart.
Searle joined Naspers in 1997 and has been instrumental not just in the initial deals but the strategy of holding on to the winning investments of so-called real business and reaping returns through dividends and joining up portfolio companies through the strategy days so lessons can be learned and applied across borders.
He joined Naspers after working at communications company Cable & Wireless in corporate financefrom 1994 to 1997 and at accountancy firmTouche Ross, which merged to become part of what is now Deloitte, from 1989 to 1994.
He studied management at Harvard University and economics at University of Cape Town.