By Christo Volschenk

BuscaPé, the Naspers-owned e-commerce company with operations throughout Latin-America, took stakes in four Brazilian start-ups for a total investment of just over $600,000 U.S.

The four are:

• Urbanizo, a real estate valuation service tracking prices by region and compiling “price heat maps” for easier analysis. Premium versions are marketed to real estate agents and investors.
• Anuncie LA, [meaning "advertise here"], is a social classifieds site, which enables buyers and sellers to get to know each other better before transacting by showing them profiles from networks such as Orkut, Facebook and Twitter;
• Meu Carrinho, [meaning "my shopping cart"] is an app for mobile devices enabling shoppers to compare grocery prices of different supermarkets as published on their websites.
• HotMart provides infrastructure for the distribution and publication of digital content. Included in the service is safe storage, access control, payment processing and automatic delivery of content to end buyers.

BuscaPé took a 30 percent stake in each of the four start-ups in return for infrastructure, marketing, management and legal support for their businesses and a cash injection of about $120,000 U.S. for each.

Multinational media group Naspers bought a 95 percent stake in BuscaPé in 2009. Sao Paolo-based BuscaPé focuses on comparison shopping, e-commerce and classifieds. Among others, it provides comparison shopping solutions to more than 100 portals and owns QueBarato, a leading free classifieds platform in Latin-America.

The announcement on 2 August of the decision to take stakes in the four businesses came as a surprise. The four start-ups were finalists in a competition written out by BuscaPé in February this year. Originally, the company offered roughly $650,000 U.S. to the best e-commerce or mobile-platform idea submitted before July this year.

The competition was open to Brazilian start-ups and young businesses. Eight hundred entries were received, from which 11 finalists were chosen by a panel, which included Romero Rodrigues, CEO of BuscaPé.

The panel met on 1 August to decide the winner. Instead of announcing one winner, the organisers then decided to hand four of the finalists $120,000 U.S. each and take a 30% stake in each. BuscaPé said it will repeat the competition next year and aims to turn it into an annual event.