Last week MXit was bought out by Alan Knott-Craig Jr’s World of Avatar – at a time when it faces its greatest challenges. He talks frankly about competing with BBM and WhatsApp – and more – with ARTHUR GOLDSTUCK.
Tag archives: naspers
Tiger in the ecommerce henhouse
by Herman Manson. Kim Reid, diplomatically perhaps, doesn’t care what the competition of his online retail venture, Takealot.com, is up to. The ecommerce market in South Africa is so nascent that it makes more sense to focus on successfully implementing your own strategy and building your own business, rather than fretting about what other players are doing, he says.
Jason Xenopoulos wants to win the advertising war
Jason Xenopoulos recently re-emerged as an important player in the SA digital arena through his role in facilitating and leading the merger of Brandsh, Stonewall+ and Cambrient,to launch Native.
[Netprophet 2011] African ecommerce market has a long way to go
A billion Africans and 50 million bank accounts. In South Africa, credit cards are used by only 16.5% of the population (2008). No African country comes close to 1% of total retail spend spent online – the magic figure which constitutes the tipping point for digital retail growth (in SA, ecommerce has a 0.4% share of the retail market, while in countries such as Egypt and Nigeria, the figure stands at 0.01%). No wonder, then, that the ecommerce market in Africa hasn’t bloomed.
Looking at these numbers, many international ecommerce plays have shifted investment in the African market 5-10 years down the line. But where others fear to tread Oliver Rippel, CEO ecommerce Africa & Middle East at MIH, sees opportunity and first-mover advantage.