05 September
Breaking news: MIH acquires Afrigator
Moments ago Bandwidth Blog got the scoop in the latest South African internet acquisition. MIH Print Africa have acquired a majority stake in African blog aggregator Afrigator. This will be huge for the local startup as MIH Africa has investments all over Africa which will help Afrigator reach a larger audience in the African continent. The acquisition also means funding to market and further develop the Afrigator platform. With large internet audiences in SA, Kenya, Egypt and Nigeria Afrigator is in a great position to gain critical mass by combining the audience (bloggers, readers) in these countries. MIH Africa’s objective is to build audiences and communities in Africa and with Afrigator’s platform they can launch into the emerging market to quickly gain market share and also leverage Afrigators existing base.
“We could not have chosen a better partner in MIH Print Africa as their strategy for Africa aligns perfectly with ours and is an important development for the social media space across our continent - validating the importance of blogging and social media in Africa.”
We have covered Afrigator extensively in the past with their beta and mobile launches. Development of Afrigator has been at a good pace considering the team worked on their project part time. The majority stake acquisition opens the doors for the founders to work on the project full time. Two of the minds behind Afrigator, Justin Hartman (Avusa iLab) and Stii Pretorius , will be moving down to Cape Town to develop Afrigator full time.
Below: Stii (right) already settled in the MIH Africa offices.
This means together with funding and gaining access to a larger audience, Afrigator’s platform will also quickly evolve with dedicated development resources. The guys at Afrigator have created a great product in their spare time - its exciting to think what they will build focused on their startup full time.
“Fundamentally this deal is hugely beneficial to all our users as we can all finally focus on Afrigator full-time. We have also employed Lester Hein as our Product Manager who will join the team at the beginning of October and we plan to expand our development team in the near future. “
The acquisition comes as no surprise with investments by 24.com in local social networking company, Blueworld, and minority stake acquisition by cellular giant Vodacom in local social platform Zoopy.
Cape Town has been dubbed ‘Silicon Cape’ (named after Silicon Valley) and is really living up to the title. All the top talent in SA is moving to the Cape with tons of quality startups and innovation coming out of the mother city. Investment for local startups have been scarce to come by and with deals such as Blueworld, Zoopy and now Afrigator it really helps with investor confidence. There is now scope for startups to grow profitable businesses and investors to exit and get return on investment.
The Naspers group’s social media strategy has also really taken off in recent months with local internet guru Matt Buckland moving to 24.com as GM of online publishing and social media (Laaik.it, play.24.com, Spaces, 24.com blogs etc), Rafiq Phillips moving to MIH Swat and then the acquisitions of Blueworld and Afrigator.
Kudos to the Afrigator guys - Mike, Stii, Justin and Mark - for the scoop and acquisition news!
Related posts
Disclaimer: Charl Norman is co-founder of Blueworld and works within the Naspers/MIH/24 group. Afrigator’s future strategy explained in this post is mere speculation on my behalf.
Tags:
September 5th, 2008 at 10:00 am
[...] Charl broke the story minutes ago, and the details are at the Afrigator blog, as always, but the highlights you should know are that Justin and Stii are relocating to Cape Town to work in our new offices, Lester has joined the team as employee no. 1 (welcome bro!), and that you can expect even more exciting changes and developments on the site in the near future. [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 10:09 am
[...] more on this topic here or download the official press release here. Share this with the world: Share this post with the [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
“What shall we do today Brain?”
“Try to take over the world.”
Congrats guys, this is great news!
September 5th, 2008 at 10:37 am
[...] got the scoop and published the news first on his blog: Moments ago Bandwidth Blog got the scoop in the latest South African internet acquisition. MIH [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Hey Charl, who better to broadcast our exciting news!
Thanks for your continued support!
September 5th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Thank you buddy for your support! We owe you one, AGAIN! Hehe, look at the pretty office space! Water bottles and all.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
congrats! reading the story from Canada….
hope the SA technology community builds on the momentum, build on the success, and that it’s just the start of new successful companies
kudos again!
September 5th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
[...] coverage of the deal came from Africa tech 2.0 watcher Charl Norman, who puts Afrigator’s acquisition in context with other recent deals in the [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
[...] coverage of the deal came from Africa tech 2.0 watcher Charl Norman, who puts Afrigator’s acquisition in context with other recent deals in the [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
Wow, the one day i dont logon, and i miss the news!
Congrats guys
September 6th, 2008 at 8:26 pm
[...] of the top 31 non-U.S. startups to watch worldwide by Business 2.0. Charl Norman of Bandwidth Blog broke the news about the [...]
September 8th, 2008 at 7:32 am
[...] Friday, Bandwidthblog broke the news that Afrigator - the African Social Media aggregator - was acquired by MIH Africa, which is part of [...]
September 9th, 2008 at 11:35 am
this is great news, the guys at afrigator deserve it, they made a cool product
September 10th, 2008 at 10:39 am
[...] mandate is to build cool web and mobile products for the emerging African market. MIH Africa was in the news recently when they acquired a majority stake in Afrigator, the African blog [...]
September 11th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
[...] more at Bandwidth Blog , Read Write Web and Afrigator’s [...]
September 16th, 2008 at 6:45 am
[...] the news came last week that South Africa’s blog aggregator, Afrigator has been acquired by MIH/Nasper group, I wasn’t surprised at all. When Afrigator turned one, earlier this year, I wrote a [...]
November 11th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
[...] Afrigator Internet today announced the launch of Adgator, Africa’s first blog ad network tailored specifically for South Africa. The Adgator network is aimed at helping advertisers get in to the conversation while offering bloggers the chance to earn money from their sites. [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 3:19 pm
[...] You’re just as likely to find a critique of FriendFeed as you are the latest news about Afrigator. They also have one of the coolest sections on any blog that I’ve seen with their series of [...]
December 12th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
[...] with recent startup acquisitions from South Africa such as Zoopy by Vodacom and Afrigator by MIH Group/Naspers, we can somehow hope that the world is watching. That’s why StartupsNigeria is dedicated to [...]
December 19th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
[...] Blueworld Communities has grown from strength to strengh on a weekly basis and companies like Afrigator stepping up to be the next Big online Startup in SA, to mention only a [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 9:44 am
[...] to the latest numbers released by Nielsen Online, Afrigator Internet PTY (ltd) has the ninth largest audience reach in South Africa. The new advertising reach [...]
February 11th, 2009 at 9:45 am
[...] to the latest numbers released by Nielsen Online, Afrigator Internet PTY (ltd) has the ninth largest audience reach in South Africa. The new advertising reach [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 11:06 am
[...] blogosphere, otherwise known as the Afrosphere. Having integrated 24.com’s blogging engine with Afrigator – Africa’s leading social media aggregator and directory of online content published and [...]
April 25th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
[...] Afrigator launched moments ago a new product called Gatorpeeps. It was unveiled at BarCamp Nigeria were one of the Afrigator founders, Justin Hartman, is delivering a keynote. Gatorpeeps seems to be a micro blogging service closely modeled off the hugely popular Twitter. [...]