Chinese major Tencent's option for buying 50% (minus one share) in Naspers' India business MIH India expired on 17th June 2013, and it is likely that Tencent has not exercised this option, choosing to remain a minority shareholder in the business, with non-controlling interest. At the time of filing this report, Naspers is yet to respond to a query we sent across last week, and on Thursday, and we'll update in case we hear from Tencent India Head Rahul Razdan. Over the years, Tencent has increased its holding in MIH India to 19.9%, the last acquisition of stake taking place during the financial year ending 31st March 2011. Tencent acquired 6% in December 2008, another 4% in March 2010, and 9.9% during the financial year ending 21st March 2011. In 2008, when Tencent had announced plans to invest $7.5 million investment in MIH India, apart from providing its products to the company. It is unlikely that Tencent will increase its stake in the Indian businesses because the direction in which MIH India is going now is remarkably different from where it was when Tencent invested: Naspers, through MIH India, is focusing primarily on transaction led businesses in India, especially the travel businesses in GoIbibo, Redbus, as well as Tradus and PayU, while Tencent has always been led by social media, with messaging products like WeChat (launched last year in India), and content and communities, especially around the trading of virtual goods. At the time of investment, MIH India had social…
Please subscribe to MediaNama. Don't share prints and PDFs.
You May Also Like
News
Google has released a Google Travel Trends Report which states that branded budget hotel search queries grew 179% year over year (YOY) in India, in...
Advert
135 job openings in over 60 companies are listed at our free Digital and Mobile Job Board: If you’re looking for a job, or...
News
By Aroon Deep and Aditya Chunduru You’re reading it here first: Twitter has complied with government requests to censor 52 tweets that mostly criticised...
News
Rajesh Kumar* doesn’t have many enemies in life. But, Uber, for which he drives a cab everyday, is starting to look like one, he...