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"Naspers will be a purely online player in the future," says Bob van Dijk who was appointed Naspers CEO on April Fool’s day in 2014. “That’s where the company is going.”
Van Dijk replaced current Naspers chair Koos Bekker, who had been the CEO since 1997 (in 1997, Van Dijk began his career as a junior associate at global management consulting firm McKinsey).
Naspers, founded in Stellenbosch in 1915, today operates in more than 130 countries and earns more than half of its consolidated revenue from outside South Africa. In June Naspers became only the fourth company listed on the JSE to have reached a market capitalisation of over R1tr in June this year (following beer giant Anheuser-Busch InBev [R3.1tr], British American Tobacco [R1.9tr] and SABMiller [R1.6tr]). It has stakes in over 40 businesses across the financial payments, media, online retail, classifieds, education, travel and tourism sectors.
“Markets are moving at incredible pace,” says Van Dijk. “At the same time the environment is becoming more competitive. Companies with a global presence are becoming smarter and more strategic.”
He singles out players like Facebook, Amazon and Google as Naspers’s key competitors. “They are taking their slice of advertising revenue and are investing it in growing new businesses.”
In December last year Naspers raised $2.5bn from shareholders to fund acquisitions ($1.2bn of the proceeds was used for the acquisition of a controlling stake in Avito, Russia’s largest classifieds site, and in May this year it opened a venture capital office in San Francisco.
“A lot of great companies start out of the Bay area. But what Naspers brings is it’s a global player with operational experience in many markets and countries.
“We are looking for new business that are strong on technology and are consumer focused. […] Early-stage companies with global potential,” he says.
Naspers kicked off its presence in Silicon Valley with a $15m investment in social learning network Brainly in May, the group’s first investment in the educational technology (EdTech) space. At the time, it said more than 60m students in 35 countries interact with Brainly every month.
In June followed a $60m investment in Udemy, a San Francisco-based online learning and teaching business which offers more than 40 000 courses globally in 80 different languages, through its Naspers Ventures division. In July, it invested $30m in New York-based Codecademy, which was founded in 2011 to provide “a path for learners to become coding experts without attending a traditional educational institution, which could be a game-changer in developing countries”, Naspers said at the time.
The segment where technology and education meet is “fascinating” to Naspers, Van Dijk says. “Education is a big area where people spend their time and money,” he says. “How does technology transform this?” he asks rhetorically.
*finweek is a publication of Media24, a subsidiary of Naspers.
This is an edited, shortened version of the cover story that originally appeared in the 27 October edition of finweek. Buy and download the magazine here.
