Naspers has tasked its executives to look for investment opportunities in South Africa by the end of its 2026 financial year for its next cycle of investment.
The group owns Takealot, Mr D, Media24, AutoTrader and Property24. It has invested significantly in Takealot group to build the business into the largest e-commerce platform amid increased competition from local and international rivals.
Its latest annual report says Naspers South Africa CEO Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa is expected to conclude the South African investment strategy by the end of the 2026 financial year, as well as “assess all deals coming in from investor relations and other sources with 100% response rate”.
Naspers and Prosus CEO Fabricio Bloisi said during a media briefing that “we are looking forward to finding investment opportunities in Africa. However my job as CEO is to prioritise and put more energy in a few best areas to make sure we have best in class in those areas.
“When I arrived a year ago, Prosus was doing investment in any country. My view was I need more focus to play in a few areas, win in those areas and go to the next one. My decision was three areas — Latin America, India and Europe. These are the key priorities. Probably by next year we are going to expand to [other] regions [including] Africa because of our origins.
“We want to invest specifically in AI, not only in Takealot. I believe we should have much more investment in training, developing, and education related to AI. My priority today is not investing in Africa but I am quite confident Africa is going to become more of a priority in our next cycle.”
The company will continue to invest in Takealot, which received a “very big boost from the rest of Prosus over the last few months”, said Bloisi.
“Takealot has a lot of potential and our objective is to win competition against new entrants. We are there to win and we don't expect to lose our leader position.”
The Takealot group, which includes Takealot.com and Mr D, reported a 20% rise in revenue to $823m (R14.7bn) , while adjusted earnings before interest and tax dropped to a loss of $12m. Naspers attributed the loss to increased marketing and infrastructure investments aimed at preparing for competitive pressures from new international entrants. Naspers expects Takealot to achieve profitability in the 2026 financial year.
Prosus and Naspers CFO Nico Marais said the priority is to make Takealot “better, stronger, more profitable, especially in the face of the competitive dynamics that are changing, [including] from domestic competitors like CheckersSixty60. We will use the knowledge, the skills and the technology and the AI elements that we've built up through the rest of our portfolio, and share that with Takealot. We will also support it with the necessary capital that it might need to invest and to make its business even better”
Prosus recently completed the acquisition of Latin America’s online travel agency Despegar and in May announced the acquisition of online food delivery marketplace Just Eat Takeaway.com, which operates in 14 countries
Peter Takaendesa, CIO at Mergence, said Prosus's focus on Europe, Latin America and India, didn't mean “they don’t care about South Africa, but the regions they are targeting are so big that their hands will be full for some time to come”.
The Naspers team led by Mahanyele “is fired up to grow in South Africa but they won’t grab the headlines at the Naspers group level given how small they are in the global investment portfolio — effectively less than 1% of Naspers's valuation. They are continuing to optimise their portfolio in South Africa by selling or exiting some assets while continuing to invest in key assets such as Takealot. Media assets will continue to decline while e-commerce assets will continue to grow, although reaching sustained profitability is likely to be delayed due to increased competition from Amazon and to some extent Checkers online.”
Prosus, a Naspers investment company, said it was building a top lifestyle e-commerce ecosystem in Latin America, Europe and India, focusing on areas such as fintech, online food delivery and marketplaces, with AI at the centre of the group's growth strategy across its investments.
Prosus recently completed the acquisition of Latin America’s online travel agency Despegar and in May announced the acquisition of online food delivery marketplace Just Eat Takeaway.com, which operates in 14 countries.
Bloisi said that in India “the big thing today is integrating more of our investments ... I believe in a few years we are going to be generating a lot of synergies between those businesses. There will be much more to create a real big tech group ecosystem in India. In Europe we are just getting started. Obviously we have good business in OLX and eMag in Eastern Europe. But I think in three years we are going to be strong in all Europe, with a very strong ecosystem where we have customers all around Europe using all our applications.”
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