In September, Gumtree Auto, the auto category of Gumtree South Africa, edged past Cars.co.za to become the country's second-most-popular auto site as measured by unique visitors behind AutoTrader.co.za. In September, a mere 300,000 unique browsers separated the top three sites, according to audience stats company Effective Measure (EM).
PrivateProperty, South Africa's second-biggest property site after Property24, was sold to a consortium of local investors which includes JSE-listed Caxton. The deal is subject to the approval of the anti-trust authority of SA.
According to TheHinduBusinessLine (here), Amarjit Singh Batra, CEO of stuff site OLX India for the past nine years, has been promoted within Naspers and his successor will be announced soon. The publication quoted OLX Group CEO Martin Scheepbouwer as having said Batra will be given "a greater role in Naspers". We asked for confirmation of the report at OLX Group and will update this report once we've heard from either OLX or Naspers.
OLX.ua, the dominant horizontal classifieds site in Ukraine with 150 million monthly visitors on average, added a tool called Safe Deal, which cuts the risk for site users of falling prey to credit card fraud.
We heard from a reputable source that Naspers has acquired AutoTrader.co.za, South Africa's leading auto vertical. According to the source, the transaction is currently at the Competition Commission of SA for its approval. If approved, it will be one of the biggest classified deals - if not the biggest - to date in South Africa.
In a blog post, Benjamin Schneider, OLX's Berlin-based head of engineering, lifted the lid over the payments system his team developed in-house for rollout to OLX Group sites around the world. The payments service is known as Plutus. While the post is really about the technology stack they chose to build Plutus, Schneider sheds some light on the functions of the system.
Over half of normal shareholders vote against compensation package for CEO Bob Van Dijk, pointing to growing dissatisfaction with management. But his pay-and-options package ultimately passed.
Naspers plans to launch two verticals in Colombia next year.
At the annual general meeting of Naspers, chairman Koos Bekker responded for the first time to criticism that Naspers is over-reliant on Tencent, and that Naspers CEO Bob van Dijk destroys rather than adds value, and should therefore not be given a pay rise. Consequently, the Naspers share trades at a discount to the value of its Tencent stake.
With the annual general meeting of Naspers shareholders and the board just two days away, shareholder Allan Gray announced it will vote against a pay package for CEO Bob van Dijk, because it does not reflect the true performance of the company.
