Naspers buys another price comparison site

PriceCheck, a South African price comparison website, has been acquired by MIH, the investment arm of Naspers, the emerging market internet giant.

Naspers recently made waves by announcing it was to buy a stake in a Russian internet company that holds a stake in Facebook, social network game creator Zynga and instant messaging service, ICQ.

Last year, Naspers acquired a 91% stake in Brazilian e-commerce group Buscape.com Inc for $342-million as part of its strategy to expand into emerging markets. Buscape’s flagship site is also a price comparison site.

Contractual obligations are forcing parties in the PriceCheck deal to remain tight-lipped about the details of the transaction, but the deal is thought to be fractional compared to the Buscape purchase in 2009.

Local internet entrepreneur Kevin Tucker is the driving force behind PriceCheck, a service he created after living in the United Kingdom for a number of years and witnessing the exponential growth of online shopping.

As a programmer by trade, Tucker began work on the site in 2005, modelling it on a combination of Shopping.com and Kelkoo.

Development of PriceCheck was funded through the sale of Bidmax.co.uk, a lowest unique bid auction site in the UK and angel investments from friends and family.

The site was launched in June 2006 and was run as a one-man show until mid-2007 when it attracted the attention of Onno Staal, a Dutch investor living in Cape Town who bought 50% of the company.

Tucker explains that, following the investment, “We hired some content staff and we moved into a new office and by then there were 4 of us (2 content, 1 other programmer). The company was by then self-funding and we ran a tight ship for another couple of years.”

The acquisition is likely to catapult PriceCheck to a higher level of activity and greater reach by placing them in the same stable as companies like Chinese IM giant Tencent, local mobile IM social network Mxit and mobile advertising specialist Buzzcity — all of which were also acquired by MIH in the past few years.