Naspers acquires majority stake in Russian online classifieds group Avito in $1.2 billion transaction
South African Internet and media company Naspers has become the largest shareholder in Avito, the leading online classifieds platform in Russia with more than 35 million unique monthly visitors …
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2015 deal opened what would become a seven-year arc: Naspers' initial majority stake was followed by a $1.16B top-up taking ownership above 99% at a $3.85B valuation, making Avito one of its flagship emerging-market assets alongside Mail.ru and Delivery Hero.
The end of that arc is already on record — Prosus (the Dutch vehicle created by the Naspers internet spin-off) moved to sell Avito to Kismet Capital for ~$2.46B, against analyst valuations near $6B before Russia's invasion. The original $1.2B entry is therefore the starting line of both a strong commercial run and a steep geopolitical markdown.
First-order effects
- Naspers becomes the largest shareholder in Russia's leading classifieds platform — a site drawing more than 35 million unique monthly visitors — putting the group's capital behind the country's dominant marketplace rather than a challenger.
- Avito gains a deep-pocketed strategic backer with a track record of holding and scaling classifieds positions, shifting it from founder/independent status to a portfolio asset inside a multinational internet group.
Second-order effects
- Doubling down on Avito pushed Naspers toward full ownership by 2019, concentrating an outsized share of group value in Russian and Chinese assets — concentration that later forced the Prosus exit decision.
- Classifieds' proven economics kept attracting large capital even elsewhere in Europe: Permira's €1.9B purchase of a 10.2% Adevinta stake from eBay shows the same sector being repositioned between strategic and financial owners.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Western-listed internet holdings in Russia become structurally discounted assets: Avito's sale price versus its pre-war valuation demonstrates that operational success cannot offset country-risk repricing when an exit window closes.
- For emerging-market internet investors generally, the lesson embedded in this arc is that minority-to-majority-to-full-ownership strategies maximize upside in good years but leave no partial-exit option when geopolitics intervenes — favoring earlier monetization or local partner structures going forward.
The trend: Global internet groups that concentrated emerging-market classifieds bets into full ownership are now being forced by geopolitics to unwind those positions at steep discounts to private-market peaks.