BuzzCity gets USD 10 million for growth in South Africa

BuzzCity, a developer of global wireless communities and consumer services, has secured USD$10 million growth capital financing by new investor Naspers, a South Africa based integrated multinational media company.

From the press release
 
“The growth opportunity for off-deck services continues to grow globally. We’ve seen phenomenal growth in markets in South Asia and Africa and in the coming year, we expect to see this growth to include markets in Europe and USA” said KF Lai, CEO of BuzzCity. ”The common footprints we have make this a strategic relationship for developing our media properties, particularly in South Africa, India and Thailand. We look forward to working closely with the group to ramp up our growth” added Lai.
 
“The past year for us has also been marked by partnerships with some of the world’s leading WAP publishers and mobile digital agencies. BuzzCity has been on an aggressive development programme and secured overwhelming interest from businesses to be part of our growth plans,” added Lai. He continues: “Users are clearly loving what BuzzCity is offering; the number of users has grown exponentially, and traffic to myGamma network of partner sites has exceeded 6 billion pageviews in the first 6 months of 2008.”

What we think?
I like BuzzCity and this is great for South Africa. The market is developing and BuzzCity is cornering a market of blue collar networkers that use mobile as a primary service.

But; I am not too sure about the stats though – 6 billion page views in 6 months. myGamma uses a lot of link and click populating ideas to generate its own traffic (see article in mobileseonews.com) , which means that the stats sound better than they actually are.

Saying that myGamma does still manage to generate a lot of traffic and we have a gomonews and a mobileseo site on it too. Which I have been tracking and have been impressed with.

Saying all of that – any investment is a great opportunity. What I am weary about is the organic growth of myGamma in new markets. Asia is nailed but penetrating new markets will come down to development of mobile services, quality of the network and marketing.

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2. myGamma Radiates Two Billion Ads Per Month
3. BuzzCity goes to grow in India
4. BuzzCity: social networking
5. Mobility World Congress: Vodafone South Africa (Vodacom) advertising success with please call me services