(Chinese Version)

Ever since the overseas version of WeChat was launched into the market, WeChat has become Tencent’s most powerful weapon to conquer the global market. According to itnewsafrica’s report, Tencent and Naspers made joint investment in the building of WeChat Africa. Recently, WeChat Africa announced it would back M4JAM, a micro-jobbing platform in South Africa, with plenty of funds. By far, this platform has already been integrated into WeChat. This whole thing signifies the expanding of WeChat within Africa though details have not been revealed yet.

Naspers is a multinational mass media corporation headquartered in South Africa and the biggest shareholder of Tencent(33.73%). Its shares of Tencent were bought by MIH, an offshore subsidiary of Naspers, in June, 2001, for 12.6 million dollars from PCCW. In June, 2002, other founders of Tencent also sold their shares to MIH, so that MIH got another 13.5% of Tencent’s share. According to the closing price (130 HK dollars per share) yesterday, Tencent’s total market value already hit 1.2175 trillion HK dollars, meaning that the share MIH is holding now worth 410.6 billion HK dollars, about 53 billion US dollars.

This time, Naspers and Tencent joined hands and invested in M4JAM. Naspers can provide Tencent with the local operation experience and local resources in South Africa. Thanks to that, WeChat will officially crack open the African market and start to expand.

Naspers, as the biggest shareholder of Tencent, has been unusually quiet all along. The company barely shows up in any activities held by Tencent, and it also gave up its right to vote to Ma Huateng’s team, and only enjoys the dividend rights.

M4Jam (Money for Jam) is a platform similar to Ebay, a popular e-commerce platform for users to trade different items. The difference is, M4JAM is a platform where brands provide small jobs for jobbers to do and make extra cash. Its main purpose is to build a bridge between the brands and jobbers.

According to Andre Hugo, CEO of M4JAM, M4JAM takes big jobs from reputable companies and breaks them into smaller jobs, allowing users to complete simple tasks using their phones in exchange for cash. The main value of this platform is that companies can use it to find people to work for them and complete certain tasks at a lower price while jobbers can have access to a platform where they can have effective communication with their clients.

As far as we are concerned, M4JAM can help students, unemployed workforce, retirees, and even current workers make extra cash without spending too much time and energy. This service was officially launched on August 11^th last year, and it has successfully convinced over 40 biggest brands in Africa, including TomTom, TNS, Telesure, and Shoprite etc., to join the platform. Currently, M4JAM is providing jobbers for these companies, among which the famous car navigation company, TomTom, has offered over 13,000 micro jobs to the jobbers. Hugo also stated that users won’t have to download a new app to enjoy this service, because they only need to follow M4JAM’s official account on WeChat then everything is ready for them to use. The general manager of WeChat Africa, Brett Loubser, revealed that they were currently supporting a number of official accounts that offered similar services like M4JAM does and there would be more similar startups to be launched on WeChat this year. 

In the global market, WeChat has to face fierce competitions from Line, KakaoTalk, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and other International heavyweights. In Japan and Korea, WeChat is accumulating more and more users. However, according to Tencent, WeChat hasn’t made the equivalent accomplishment in America or in Europe, meaning WeChat still has a long way to go in terms of its global market share.

TMTpost collected some information on Naspers, the legendary shareholder of Tencent, to give our readers a clear understanding of the history and current situation of this company. The following information were collected from ZhiHu, Xueqiong and Hong Kong Economic Journal etc. 

1. The South African company MIH holds about 34% of Tencent’s shares.
2. During the initial period of Tencent, IDG and PCCW respectively invested 2.2 million dollars in the company. Each of them took up 20% of Tencent’s shares while Ma Huateng and his team had 60% of the company’s shares.
3. After getting listed in 2004, Tencent made readjustments in its shareholding structure. As a result, MIH and the venture team respectively held 50% of its shares. Up to now, MIH holds 33.93% of Tencent’s shares while Ma Huateng has 10.22%, less than even one third of the proportion that MIH has. Fortunately, MIH had great confidence in Ma Huadeng and gave up all the voting rights, and therefore even though Ma doesn’t have a large proportion of the shareholdings, the actual management and operations are still run by him and other co-founders. A friend from Tencent confirmed that Ma Huateng and his management team have the absolute managing power and the voting rights while the 34% shares holder, MIH, only enjoys the dividend rights.

Naspers was originally made of two words, Nasionale(National) and Pers(Press). The corporation was founded in 1915, 13 years after the Anglo-Boer War, when the political situation in South Africa was very unstable and the central government had only been in power for five years. In July, 1915, Naspers first published the Afrikaans language daily Die Burger, which aimed to promote the local language and Afrikaners’ political views (Afrikaners are mostly the descendants of immigrants from France and Netherlands). Its first editor in chief, D. F. Malan, later became the fourth prime minister of South Africa after winning the 1948 election.

The government’s main policies during the following 40 years included the preservation of white supremacy, separation of the races, and retribalization of the Africans. Die Burger became the tool for the government to indoctrinate the mass media and promote its racial segregation policy. Until 1990, the year that Nelson Mandela, who had devoted himself to ending the racial segregation in South Africa, got released from prison, Die Burger finally broke away from the National Party and went separate ways. Seven years later, Die Burger’s 127 journalists and editors made official apology to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, an organization led by the Archbishop, Desmond Tutu, for the fact that it had been indoctrinating the mass with racial segregation policy for years. That’s also when Die Burger and Naspers ended everything with the racial segregation. 1997 was not only the year in which Naspers was reborn, it was also the time when Koos Bekker, the one who decided to invest in Tencent, became the CEO of the company. He’s the very person that made Naspers the king in the South Africa’s stock market. Koos Bekker didn’t have any direct connection to the racial segregation policy or Die Burger, he was highly regarded because Naspers loved M-Net, a well-known pay television company he founded. Koos Bekker graduated from Columbia Business School in 1984 with an MBA. And during his time in school he developed an interest in the business models of pay television, which he became really good at obviously. After his company became rather successful and was highly regarded by Naspers, he made his way quickly to the top within the Company and eventually became Naspers’ CEO in 1997.

After Koos Bekker took control of Naspers, he made two decisions that had huge impacts on the company:

1. As I have mentioned before, Koos Bekker had an excellent understanding of the pay television business. That’s why he decided to integrate the company’s pay television business in South Africa and expand it to the whole Africa. Up till now, although Naspers is a mass media corporation with principal operations in pay television and print media, its pay television business’s turnover takes up over 60% of its total revenue.
2. Pay television business does contribute a lot to the company’s revenue, but Koos Bekker was able to do better and made new breakthrough. He decided to buy Tencent’s shares in 2001 and apparently it literally transformed the company. The best part was that he bought almost half of the shares (about 46.5%). 13 years ago Tencent was still a small and common company with only one instant messaging product named QQ.

The situation back then was quite harsh. The bubble generated by the Internet industry had just exploded no longer than a year ago and the shockwave swept through the whole industry. During that time investors were afraid of any company from that particular industry. Plus, Naspers’s a company with a history of over a hundred years, most people didn’t and still don’t really understand why Koos Bekker would put such great investment in a company headquartered in Shenzhen with a future that’s hard to predict. Some said that it was all because of Mark Surour, Chief Investment Officer of Naspers, who had spend a long time in HongKong and discovered Tencent.

However, let’s get one thing straight. The deal was made in 2001, and the Tencent back then was entirely different from what it was in 2010. Tencent didn’t have anything to offer except QQ at that time, and therefore it was extremely bold for Koos Bekker to make such investment. Of course, he was also very lucky as well, almost too lucky. People become successful because they are the right people to be at the right place at the right time, and Naspers, which was led by Koos Bekker, was the very example of that.

In 2001, Naspers bought 46.5% of Tencent’s share for 32 million dollars. For the next 13 years, Tencent expanded its product line and businesses from QQ to WeChat, online advertising, and even online game sector. Its share price has jumped from 3.7 HK dollars back in 2004 to today’s 500 HK dollars. Tencent is now a well-respected and successful company in China, and it has achieved a grade that few can match. Naspers bought almost half of Tencent’s shares three years before it got listed. And the shares that Naspers held shrunk to 34% after Tencent became listed officially. However, Naspers still possesses more shareholding than Ma Huateng, who only has 10.25% of Tencent’s share, which is to say that Naspers is still the biggest shareholder of Tencent.

(The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Wang Zhen, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.)

Translated by Garret Lee(Senior Translator at ECHO), working for TMTpost.