The emerging online giants 若隐若现的网络巨擘

Internet investment's new champions

互联网投资界新贵

The emerging online giants

若隐若现的网络巨擘

DST, Naspers and Tencent have made promising internet investments in many emerging markets. Now even Western internet financiers are emulating them

DST，Naspers和腾讯已经在诸多新兴市场做出了卓有成效的网络投资，现在甚至连西方的网络投资界也开始效仿他们

Jul 8th 2010

 

THEY may not have the name recognition of a Google or a Yahoo!, but they can claim to belong in the same league. The websites of Digital Sky Technologies (DST) account for more than 70% of page-views on the Russian-language internet. Naspers is Africa’s biggest media group, both offline and online. And Tencent is China’s largest internet company by market capitalisation—and the third-largest in the world.

它们也许没有Google或者Yahoo那么高的知名度，但是他们可以宣称属于同一个阵营。DST的网站占据了俄语互联网70%以上的浏览量，Naspers是非洲最大的网络和传统媒体集团，而腾讯则是按市值计算中国最大，世界第三的互联网公司。

Now these firms are increasingly making their presence felt beyond their home markets. Between them they have invested in dozens of internet firms around the globe. The most adventurous of the three, DST, has already moved west—and paid top dollar for stakes in fast-growing American companies, notably Facebook, the world’s biggest social network.

现在，这些公司的身影越来越多地在其母国以外出现。他们之间已经在全球范围投资了好几十家互联网公司。其中最具冒险精神的DST已经挥师西方国家，并花费大把钞票购买具有高成长性的美国公司的股分，其中最惹人注目的就是入股世界最大的社交网站Facebook。

At first glance the three firms could not look more different. DST was created in 2005 when two Russian internet investors, Yuri Milner and Gregory Finger, pooled their interests in mail.ru, a Russian web portal. Today the firm controls many of the country’s leading websites and boasts an interesting mix of owners, including Goldman Sachs and Alisher Usmanov, a Russian billionaire, who holds 27%.

一眼看上去这三家公司八竿子打不着。DST于2005年由两位俄罗斯互联网投资者Yuri Milner和Gregory Finger将其所拥有的门户网站mail.ru的股份合并而成。如今这家公司控制了俄罗斯许多主要的网站，并以其有趣的多方所有制而自夸。其所有方包括了高盛和拥有27%股份的俄罗斯亿万富翁Alisher Usmanov。

Based in Cape Town, Naspers is nearly 100 years old and is the publisher of the Daily Sun, South Africa’s biggest newspaper. But it is one of the most ambitious old-media companies anywhere in its move online. It still makes most of its sales—28 billion rand ($3.6 billion) in the year to March—from print and pay-television, but it uses the cash to buy online firms.

Naspers立足于开普敦已有将近百年历史，是南非最大的报纸Daily Sun的发行商。但是在网络化方面，它是所有传统媒体中最具抱负的公司之一。目前这家公司仍以纸质报纸和付费电视为主营业务，并在第一季度创下销售额280亿南非兰特（折合成美元36亿），但是它也花大钱收购网络公司。

Tencent hails from Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. Founded in 1998, it had revenues of $1.8 billion in 2009. Although best known for QQ, a popular instant-messaging service with 567m users, much of its profits come from online games and a virtual currency, called Q coins. Users purchase this with real money and use it to buy digital wares, such as virtual weapons to increase the powers of their avatars.

腾讯来自深圳，离香港不远。成立于1998年的腾讯在2009年营收达18亿美元。虽然其最出名的产品是QQ，在中国是最受欢迎的即时通信软件并拥有5.67亿用户，其大部分利润来自在线游戏和一种被称为Q币的虚拟货币。用户用真实的钱币兑换Q币并用它来购买诸如提升游戏角色能力的虚拟道具。

Despite their differences, the three firms can be seen as a block. For one thing, they are financially intertwined. Naspers owns part of mail.ru and was an early investor in Tencent, of which it now holds 35%. In April Tencent invested $300m in DST, giving it a stake of more than 10% and DST a valuation of about $3 billion. Tencent also has an interest in the Indian arm of MIH, Naspers’s internet division.

尽管互相有如此大的差别，这三家公司其实是一伙的。首先，它们在股份上互相关联。Naspers拥有mail.ru的部分股份，也是腾讯的早期投资者并拥有其35%的股份。今年四月份，腾讯给DST注资3亿美元从而获得其超过10%的股份，并使DST市值达到30亿美元左右。腾讯同时还在Naspers旗下的网络公司MIH的印度分公司拥有股份。

What is more, the firms are on the same mission: finding promising internet companies in countries where Western investors rarely dare to go. DST’s territories are Russia and its neighbours, most of which are home to one of its collection of companies; these include social networks such as VKontakte.ru and Nasza-Klasa.pl. Naspers has the largest portfolio of internet firms in developing countries, for instance in Brazil (BuscaPé, a comparison-shopping site), India (ibibo, a social network) and at home in South Africa (24.com, a portal). Tencent has so far been the most cautious of the three. Besides its recent investment in DST it has some minority stakes in games companies, such as VinaGame in Vietnam.

更重要的是，这些公司都有同样的使命：在西方投资者极少敢于尝试的国家寻找有发展前途的互联网公司。DST的业务范围涵盖俄罗斯及其邻国，其旗下的诸多子公司在这些地区占有主要市场，包括社交网站VKontakte.ru和Nasza-Klasa.pl。Naspers拥有发展中国家互联网公司领域最大的投资组合，比如巴西的购物网站BuscaPé，印度的社交网站ibibo以及母国南非的门户网站24.com。腾讯目前是三家公司中最审慎的一家，除了最近对DST的投资以外它在一些游戏公司也有少量股份，像越南的VinaGame。

This international presence allows the firms to apply lessons they have learned in one country to another. “We spend an enormous amount of time on sharing knowledge,” says Antoine Roux, the boss of MIH. For its part, DST knows which web businesses work and how much room for growth they still have, given a country’s GDP and internet penetration. Alexander Tamas, a partner at DST, calls this “geographical arbitrage”.

这样的国际经历使得他们可以将在一个国家学到的经验应用到其他国家。MIH的老板Antoine Roux说道，我们花费大量的时间互享知识经验。就DST而言，他们可以学到在给定一个国家的GDP和网络普及程度的条件下，哪些网络业务有利可图并且还有多大的增长空间。DST的股东Alexander Tamas将此称为“地域性套利”。

In Russia DST has seen how quickly social networks can grow: latecomers to the internet, many Russians skipped e-mail and went right to social networks to communicate online. With advertising roubles in short supply, DST’s companies also experimented early with other ways of making money from social networks and online games, such as charging for services and selling virtual goods. In December it merged mail.ru with Astrum Online, a gaming firm—in effect forming a Russian Tencent. Free communication tools such as instant messaging create the audience that then pays for other services and virtual goods, Mr Tamas explains.

DST见证了社交网站在俄罗斯增长之快：由于互联网在俄罗斯普及较晚，很多俄罗斯人跳过电子邮件直接使用社交网站来进行网上交流。由于广告收入不多，DST的网络公司一早就开始尝试社交网站和网络游戏的其他赚钱之道，比如付费服务和兜售虚拟商品。十二月份，DST将mail.ru和游戏公司Astrum Online合并，而后者其实就是腾讯的俄罗斯翻版。Tamas先生解释说，免费的即时通信软件带来了大量的用户，这些用户同时为其他付费服务和虚拟商品买单。

Tomorrow, the world

明天的目标是全世界

It was only a question of time before one of the three firms tried to apply these emerging-market lessons in the West. DST has been the pioneer, for several reasons. Its partners learned their trade in America. It intends to go public one day. And it saw an opportunity: after the financial crisis, conventional investors were cautious and did not fully realise how fast social networks, for instance, would grow.

这三家公司中有人开始尝试将其在新兴市场学到的经验应用到西方世界仅仅是个时间问题。由于诸多因素DST成为了先行者。首先它的股东有在美国市场打拼的经历，其次它准备将来上市，并且他们看到了一次绝好的机会：在金融危机之后传统投资者变得比较谨慎，比如，他们没有充分意识到社交网站发展速度之快。

One further factor was essential in helping DST to gatecrash the party of the handful of private-equity funds, such as Elevation Partners, TCV and Silver Lake Partners, which typically provide successful American internet firms with additional cash. DST’s corporate structure allows it to act quickly, and to make offers that are hard to refuse. In the case of Facebook, it agreed to what at the time seemed a high valuation, waived any right to special treatment should things go wrong and was willing to buy stock from employees. That is especially popular with young internet firms. It allows founders and key employees to make money without having to sell the company or go public prematurely. “This is an IPO substitute,” explains Mr Milner, adding that DST’s investments give firms more time to focus on their product rather than thinking about a flotation.

还有一个更重要也更基本的因素帮助DST成功加入由Elevation Partners、TCV和Silver Lake Partners等一小撮互联网公司投资家组成的私募股权基金俱乐部。DST的公司结构使得它能够决策迅速并提出让客户难以拒绝的报价。以Facebook为例，DST同意了当时看来比较高的估价，放弃了在万一企业经营不善的情况下的所有特殊权利，并且答应从职工手中收购股票。这些条件对新成立的互联网公司尤其具有吸引力。这使得公司创始人和重要员工不需要通过转售公司也不必在尚未成熟的条件下匆忙上市来赚钱。Milner先生解释说，这是公开上市的一个替代办法，DST的投资给予企业家更多的时间来提高自己的产品质量而非成天想着怎样上市。

Will DST’s strategy work? Buying into Facebook certainly looks like a smart move. DST has spent an estimated $800m for a stake of about 10%. When Elevation Partners recently invested $120m in Facebook, that deal put the company’s value at $23 billion, implying that DST’s investment has almost trebled.

DST的投资策略行得通吗？购入Facebook看起来显然是项很划算的买卖。DST花费约8亿美元购入Facebook10%的股权，当Elevation Partners最近为Facebook注资1.2亿美元的时候，其市值已经增长到230亿美元，表明DST的投资已经增长到将近原来的三倍。

In contrast, analysts say, DST may have overpaid for Zynga, the world’s largest online-gaming service, and for Groupon, a website that aggregates buyers and gets them special deals. Yet sceptics may again underestimate how quickly both can grow and what Zynga, for instance, is worth in combination with Facebook: taken together they look much like Tencent. In May, after lengthy negotiations, both firms agreed that Facebook Credits, the social network’s currency, would be accepted in Zynga’s games.

与之相反，分析师则认为DST也有些投资不甚划算，比如DST为入股世界最大的网游公司Zynga和以组织团购并提供购物折扣为业务的网站Groupon出价太高。当然这些持异议的分析师可能再次低估了这两家公司的增长速度以及Zynga和Facebook联合起来所能创造的价值：将这两家公司联合起来就跟腾讯很相似了。经过漫长的谈判，两家公司于今年五月达成共识同意Facebook上流通的虚拟货币也可以被Zynga的游戏接受。

A bigger problem for DST may be that some see it as Russian—and thus “murky”. To counter this the firm has gone to great lengths to be open, inviting executives from firms in which it wanted to invest to Moscow to look at its books. The success of this strategy is demonstrated by the quality of its recent deals and its co-investors, which include such noted venture-capital firms as Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. Even so, DST’s national origin could still matter as the firm makes further investments. Authorities in Washington, dc, are reportedly worried about DST’s latest acquisition: ICQ, an instant-messaging service previously owned by AOL.

DST的一个更大的问题是有人觉得它是俄罗斯的公司，从而具有“重重内幕”。为了打消这种疑虑DST已经做出巨大努力提高透明度，比如邀请其有投资意向的公司的高官到莫斯科访问并检查账簿。从他们最近的投资案例的质量以及其与知名的风险投资公司Accel Partners和Andreessen Horowitz的合作来看，他们的策略已经取得了成功。尽管如此随着DST投资范围的扩大，其母国背景仍然引起人们注意。根据报道，华盛顿当局对DST最近一次收购AOL的及时通信服务ICQ而深感担忧。

However DST fares, it seems to attract copycats. Before Elevation Partners invested in Facebook, it had already cut what is now called a “DST deal” with Yelp, a fast-growing user-review site for local businesses. And although Naspers does not intend to make any investments in Western countries, Tencent may follow DST in doing so. Martin Lau, Tencent’s president, recently said it would step up its forays abroad—which has led to talk that it may be interested in buying Yahoo!.

不管DST成功与否，它总不乏粉丝效仿。在Elevation Partners入资Facebook之前，它就已经跟一家快速增长的地区性商家用户评论网站Yelp达成了一次”DST式的交易“。而且尽管Naspers无意投资西方国家的公司，腾讯却很可能追随DST。腾讯总裁刘炽平（Martin Lau）新近放话说腾讯会加速海外投资的步伐，从而引起了其有意入股雅虎的传言。

Conversely, the apparent success of the three emerging-market internet pioneers may prompt Western venture firms to take more interest in developing countries. Tiger Global Management, a New York hedge fund that is also a shareholder in DST, has already specialised in investing in start-ups beyond the West’s well-known technology clusters. Clearly, internet investing is going global and the West is losing its monopoly, not just in thinking up clever ideas for web businesses but in financing them.

反过来，新兴市场这三位网络投资先驱的成功故事也会促使西方国家的风险投资公司更加关注于发展中国家。纽约的对冲基金Tiger Global Management，同时也是DST的股东之一，已经在投资非西方国家高技术集团的成长型公司方面有所专攻。显然，互联网投资正变得越来越国际化，西方国家也已开始在不仅仅是网络商务的创新方面同时也在企业融资方面失去其垄断地位。