South African-based media giant, Naspers, on Friday said it will work together with Singapore Press Holdings, Asia’s leading media organisation, to hasten its e-commerce business in emerging markets.

Naspers also joined hands with Norway’s Schibsted ASA and Telenor ASA, in a bid to re-invent itself when entering the e-commerce sector for mobile devices.

Investors liked this announcement as Naspers’ shares gained 8.2 percent on the JSE’s intra-day trading.

The joint ventures will pay more attention to online classifieds in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Brazil and Thailand, it emerged on Friday. The value of the transaction was not unveiled on Friday when the deal was announced.

The deal is Naspers’ latest move to drive farther into the profitable online businesses in emerging markets. This plan, along with other strategic moves, has repositioned Naspers as a global Internet titan, from being an apartheid-era publisher.

Bob van Dijk, Naspers CEO, earlier this year told Reuters that the firm was now paying more attention on becoming “predominantly mobile.”
This, it said at the time, will allow it to incorporate its stable of auction sites to tablets and smartphones.

Norway’s Schibsted has gone from a traditional newspaper business into an online classifieds firm, according to Reuters.

“It has operations in dozens of countries, from France to Brazil, and the online business now generates two-thirds of its profit,” Reuters reported on Friday.