Nokia Growth Partners (NGP), the corporate venturing arm of communications technology provider Nokia, achieved its biggest exit to date on Thursday when online marketplace 58.com acquired a stake in China-based local services platform Ganji.
58.com will take a 43.2% share in Ganji, paying $412m in cash together with 34 million of its shares, which would be worth almost $2.4bn going by 58.com’s share price at the time of publication.
Founded in 2005, Ganji runs an online local services listings service that counts hundreds of millions of monthly users.
NGP and venture capital firm Bluerun Ventures invested $20m in Ganji through 2010, the year before Capital Today and Sequoia Capital provided a further $70m. Tiger Global Management and Carlyle Group added an extra $200m in August 2014.
NGP has not disclosed how much it will make from the deal but confirmed that it represents its largest exit to date.
58.com partly funded the deal with a $400m investment by internet portal Tencent, which will increase its stake in the company to 25.1% through the deal. It invested $836m in 58.com last year, after 58.com went public in late 2013.
Michael Jinbo Yao, 58.com’s chairman and CEO, said: “We are pleased to make this large-scale strategic investment in Ganji.com to jointly realise major cost, revenue, and strategic business synergies.
This transaction is part of our larger plan to execute our vision of integrating our respective businesses and creating a larger and more effective local services internet platform to help consumers around China find the services that they need in their local area.”