One wonders what the strategy of Naspers is in Sub-Saharan Africa. It seems it just does not believe in starting a company from scratch outside South Africa.
WeChat has closed shop in Nigeria and is now operating from South Africa. There is no local staff in Nigeria anymore… It has been confirmed that all the staff in the Nigerian office have resigned, even the Country Manager…….Another one bites the dust.
WeChat is a mobile text and voice messaging communication service developed by Tencent in China, first released in January 2011. WeChat in Africa is being managed by Naspers as it is one of the investors in Tencent.
A lot of its companies have gone the same way. After all these experimental companies, one wonders when Naspers will get the right formula. Or is it that they don’t care?
All the eCommerce companies that started with pomp and pageantry in the last 7 years, are as follows:
- Kalahari.com.ng – An eCommerce site. Shut down
- Mocality.com.ng – An Online business directory – Shut down
- Dealfish.com.ng – A Classifieds site. Metamorphosed into OLX.com.ng
- Pricecheck.com.ng – Closed office in Nigeria. Operating from South Africa
- Property.com.ng – Not yet launched. Wonder why they are stilling waiting to enter into the Nigerian market fully. Guess they are not convinced yet.
- WeChat – Closed office in Nigeria. Operating from South Africa
Not sure about Careers24 or BitX for now? Wonder what the strategy for Careers24 is. With Naspers’ deep pockets, it should be bigger than the likes of Jobberman rather than seem as its second poor cousin.
BitX in Nigeria? Not sure many people know about BitX. Is this the right time for BitX in Nigeria? Not sure.
But one thing is for sure, even though is not good at starting something from scratch, it is good at recognising entrepreneurial talent and investing in them. It invested in Konga and now seems to own almost 100% of the eCommerce company. Guess it learnt a lot from the Kalahari exit.
Well at least they are right with the saying on their website…We partner with entrepreneurs to build leading technology companies in high-growth markets.
