INTERNET
In the previous year MIH bought Allegro, Ricardo
and Gadu-Gadu. This year MIH acquired interests
in BuzzCity (a mobile advertising network),
Compera nTime (leading provider of mobile
value-added services in Brazil) and Vatera (leading
e-commerce trading platform in Hungary).
MIH also increased its stake in mail.ru, a Russian
internet company, by 10%, taking its interest to
43%. In addition, Allegro and mail.ru increased
their stakes in Molotok, the Russian-based
e-commerce platform. Molotok is now jointly
owned by MIH and mail.ru.
Europe
Our European assets operate in
the internet segments of transaction platforms, communities, communication
platforms, entertainment services
and mobile applications. They derive their
revenues principally from facilitating
transactions through e-commerce, classifieds,
payment services, comparison shopping,
advertising, fee-based value-added services
and communication services such as VoIP
(voice over internet protocol).
The European portfolio is an aggregation
of five main businesses. mail.ru is based in
Moscow (Russia), Gadu-Gadu in Warsaw
(Poland), the Allegro group in Poznan
(Poland), the Ricardo group in Zug
(Switzerland) and Nimbuzz in Rotterdam
(the Netherlands). These operations are spread
across 20 countries with offices in 28 cities.
mail.ru continued its strong growth,
expanding its base to 78 million unique
visitors with 58 million active email users. mail.ru is the leader in Russia in mobile
instant-messaging. Its casual platform grew to
10 million by the end of March 2009 and the
social networking platform Moi Mir (My World)
serves 26 million active users.
Gadu-Gadu extended its core instant-messaging
leadership and increased its
registered user base to 15 million.
Gadu-Gadu’s casual gaming portal has
some 500 000 active users at the end of
March 2009.
The Allegro group comprises auction and
fixed-price transaction platforms, classifieds
platforms (ie auto, real estate, jobs and travel
classifieds), comparison and social shopping
sites, as well as a payments platform. A
number of these services operate across
Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary,
Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania
and Estonia. Allegro expanded its operations
in these markets during the year, whilst
consolidating its position in Russia, where it co-owns Molotok with mail.ru. The
latter is the number one transaction
trading platform in that market. In
Hungary Allegro obtained a 100%
interest in Teszvesz, a transaction
platform, and acquired Vatera
(an online auction platform).
Arjan Bakker, chief executive of
Allegro, and his team aim to invest
in further diversification within
Allegro’s service offering.
Despite tough economic conditions
affecting Western Europe, the
Ricardo group consolidated its leading
position in Switzerland and launched
new operations in Greece and Austria.
Nimbuzz, of which MIH now owns 38%, is a
Netherlands-based technology firm focused
on mobile instant-messaging aggregation and
VoIP. The company officially launched its
offering in May 2008 and has approximately
five million registered users.
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