Naspers has today announced that it made a $94 million (1.4 billion Rand) investment in South Africa Webuycars, a specialized car buying service. The investment was through Naspers' Classifieds business, OLX Group.
It looks like Naspers is looking at plugging Webuycars into OLX.
"The combination of Webuycars’ specialized instant buying model and OLX’s proprietary online classifieds technology will strengthen the overall used car ecosystem in South Africa," the company wrote.
Adding that this will be through "providing dealerships with improved access to stock and private buyers and sellers with an enhanced user experience focused on trust, safety, and convenience".
The company also added that the buy is part of its continued evolution into an internet company. "The investment forms part of parent company Naspers’ undertaking to accelerate growth in classifieds, online food delivery and fintech businesses globally."
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Founded in 2001 by Faan and Dirk van der Walt, Webuycars operates a used car marketplace in South Africa offering a specialized car buying service to sellers.
In May this year, Naspers also invested $89 million into Berlin-based Frontier Car Group through OLX Group.
Most recently, in August, New York-based LetGo raised a $500 million Series E from Naspers, again through OLX group. This, was a follow-on investment as Naspers had led their $100 million Series A in September 2015. In June 2018, OLX group also acquired Latin America's Properati.
Yesterday, Naspers announced that it was going to list its video entertainment arm, MultiChoice, on the Johannesburg Security Exchange.