Naspers, a South Africa-based multinational group of media and e-commerce platforms, listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, has acquired BuyThePrice.com (BTP), an e-com marketplace owned and operated by Hyderabad-based MyZingo eCommerce Service Pvt Ltd, and merged it with an existing investment, Tradus.com. The entire BuyThePrice catalogue will be available on Tradus.com. Financial details of the investment have not been made public. News of the deal was first reported by MediaNama.
Tradus is part of the IbiboGroup, which operates a portfolio of internet businesses including travel site Goibibo.com, payments company Payu.in and auto classifieds site Gaadi.com. Founded in 2007, its key investors include Naspers and China’s Tencent Holdings, China’s largest online gaming and social networking company. Incidentally, shares in Naspers have increased more than 2 per cent, riding on a more than one-third growth in quarterly profit from its Chinese ‘money spinner’ Tencent Holdings.
Naspers, which owns just over a third of Tencent Holdings, saw shares increase 2.1% to R595.34 ($66) shortly after Tencent posted a 36.5% rise in fourth-quarter profit from a year ago, meeting analysts’ expectations on robust sales of online games, according to Fin24, a business news website owned by incidentally, Naspers.
In February last year, Naspers, through its subscriber management, signal distribution and cellular telephone activities arm, MIH Holdings, invested Rs 8.5 crore ($1.56m) in BuyThePrice, according to India mobile technology siteTechcircle.in. Prior to that fundraising, BuyThePrice raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from members of the Indian Angel Network.
However, at the end of 2012, BuyThePrice changed its business model to a 100 per cent marketplace, withdrawing from holding stock. Instead, it had sellers offering their products for sale on the site, according to industry reports.
Other India deals in the segment include a reported $10m series B round of funding of Clues Network Pvt Ltd, which runs e-commerce marketplace ShopClues.com. Netprice.com, a Japanese business group based in Tokyo, invested alongside Helion Venture Partners and Nexus Partners.