Naspers wants to become a Silicon Valley stalwart, and has subsequently set up new offices in San Francisco.
The Cape Town-based media giant announced the move today, suggesting that it wishes to sink its roots into the area’s deep startup culture. The new unit, dubbed Naspers Ventures, is what the company’s CEO Bob van Dijk believes will begin its “next phase of growth.”
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Naspers definitely isn’t afraid of splashing spare change, with the company investing over US$1.5-billion in other companies in 2015, with investments as far reaching as Russia.
“We believe we can utilize our deep knowledge of consumer internet and international markets to identify companies with business models that can scale internationally. We think, given our experience, that we can help these companies ‘go global’ faster,” the company told BusinessTech.
According to TechCrunch who broke the story, Naspers Ventures has already invested in a few companies, with the most notable the mobile only classifieds site LetGo fetching US$100-million.
