Naspers is upbeat about its prospects in Indonesia and Malaysia’s ecommerce markets, it said on Monday.

This is despite the fact that the JSE-listed media giant had to shut down its Jakarta-based ecommerce site, Multiply.com, at the end of May this year.

Naspers closed down the site because it had performed far below expectation after it was restructured to an online marketplace from a social interacting platform.

BusinessTech quoted Naspers spokesperson as saying the company closed down Multiply.com after allowing merchants on the site some space to move to other ecommerce platforms.

Both these businesses are leaders in their own categories in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Naspers still holds strong views on online spending, believing this is the latest international consumer craze.

The company also expects that smartphones and other similar gadgets will speed up interest in services in its markets.

In June this year, Naspers said revenues in the year to March this year had surged 27 percent to R50.2 billion.

This was attributable to the company’s organic growth of current operations and further asset purchases and the weak rand.

Meanwhile, Koos Bekker, the head of Naspers, has become Africa’s new dollar billionaire.

Bloomberg last week said it had calculated the worth of his individual investments in the media firm to be $1.2 billion.

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