{"id":204880,"date":"2017-10-14T07:00:23","date_gmt":"2017-10-14T05:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=204880"},"modified":"2017-10-13T15:51:40","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T13:51:40","slug":"5-of-the-biggest-south-african-startups-deals-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/204880\/5-of-the-biggest-south-african-startups-deals-of-all-time\/","title":{"rendered":"5 of the biggest South African startups deals of all time"},"content":{"rendered":"

In early October,\u00a0Cape Town GetSmarter concluded a\u00a0$103 million (R1.4 billion) sale to\u00a0US-based technology firm, 2U, making it one of the most valuable startups in the South Africa’s history.<\/p>\n

The deal, which is believed to be the biggest ever for a South African edtech company, was first announced in May, and further bolsters Cape Town\u2019s position as a leading technology hub in the country.<\/p>\n

As not all sale prices are reported directly, it is difficult to say exactly how GetSmarter fits in compared to South Africa’s other most valuable start-ups, but it appears that the record still belongs to Mark Shuttleworth’s Thawte which sold\u00a0for $575\u00a0million in 1999.<\/sup><\/p>\n

This is also the closest the country has come to having its own “unicorn” evaluation –\u00a0 a company valued at $1 billion, according to\u00a0Jason Levin, author of a June report <\/a><\/strong>on the state of start-ups in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe total value of all the tech and innovation startups in Joburg and Cape Town together, is about $1.5 billion: a similar size to Melbourne\u2019s, smaller than Lagos\u2019, and half the size of Sao Paolo\u2019s, said Levin.<\/p>\n

He confirmed that Mark\u00a0Shuttleworth\u2019s Thawte is the start-up that has come the closest (its 1999 price tag of $575 million equates to about $850 million in modern money).<\/p>\n

However South Africa has also lost out on start-ups which have chosen to move their business out of the country, said Levin.<\/p>\n

\u201cMimecast, founded by South Africans Peter Bauer and Neil Murray, is a unicorn with a current market cap of $1.2 billion \u2013 but was created in 2003, a year after the pair left the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

BusinessTech looked at some of the other companies which have come close to this “mythical” evaluation.<\/p>\n

\n

Thawte – $575 million (sold in 1999)<\/strong><\/p>\n

While perhaps best known as the first South African in space, Mark Shuttleworth first made headlines for his 1999 sale of online security firm, Thawte, to Verisign for $575 million.<\/p>\n

Run from Shuttleworths parent’s garage, Thawte was\u00a0originally aimed to produce a secure server not fettered by the restrictions on the\u00a0export of cryptography\u00a0which had been\u00a0imposed by the United States.<\/p>\n

Using a “web of trust” model, Thawte would issue\u00a0free email certificates, while the person’s identity was assured by meeting face-to-face with one or more “Thawte Notaries” who needed to see identification and keep a copy of it.<\/p>\n

Kapa Biosystems – $445 million (sold in 2015)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kapa Biosystems, co-founded by Trey Foskett, Paul McEwan, Ron McEwan and Chris McGuinness in 2006, pioneered the use of directed evolution to develop a suite of high-performance reagents for a range of life science applications<\/p>\n

Their products are used by thousands of scientists around the world and cited in more than 4,000 peer-reviewed publications.<\/p>\n

They are continuing to develop innovative solutions that accelerate genomics research that can impact the future ability to diagnose, monitor and treat cancer and complex inherited and infectious diseases.<\/p>\n

Kapa Biosystems was bought by Roche,\u00a0a Swiss multinational healthcare company, for\u00a0$445 million in 2015.<\/p>\n

GetSmarter – $103 million (sold in 2017)<\/strong><\/p>\n

GetSmarter provides short, competency based online courses to working professionals around the world in collaboration with leading universities.<\/p>\n

Founded by brothers Rob and Sam Paddock,\u00a02U entered an agreement to acquire the startup for approximately $103 million, with an earn-out payment of up to $20 million in cash.<\/p>\n

It has served more than 50,000 students since inception, with course completion rates averaging 88%.<\/p>\n

GetSmarter\u2019s portfolio includes over 70 courses offered with its university partners, and operates under a revenue share model with the universities.<\/p>\n

Fundamo – $110 million (sold in 2011)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fundamo\u2019s platform enables the delivery of mobile financial services to unbanked and under-banked consumers around the world\u2014including person-to-person payment, airtime top-up, bill payment and branchless banking services.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s vision is for a truly connected financial services ecosystem that supports the ubiquity of mobile devices.<\/p>\n

Fundamo had some 50 deployments in over 40 countries, including 27 countries in Africa and the Middle East and another 10 globally.<\/p>\n

Prior to its sale, Fundamo was privately held by a group of investors in South Africa that included Sanlam, Remgro Limited, and HBD Venture Capital.<\/p>\n

Nimbula – $110 million (sold in 2013)<\/strong><\/p>\n

In March 2013, Oracle announced it has agreed to acquire Nimbula, a provider of private cloud infrastructure management software.<\/p>\n

Nimbula’s technology helps companies manage infrastructure resources to deliver service, quality and availability, as well as workloads in private and hybrid cloud environments.<\/p>\n

It was founded in late 2008 by\u00a0Chris Pinkham\u00a0and\u00a0Willem Van Biljon, who had developed the\u00a0Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud\u00a0(EC2).<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0Why South Africa doesn\u2019t have its own \u201cunicorn\u201d startup<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In early October,\u00a0Cape Town GetSmarter concluded a\u00a0$103 million (R1.4 billion) sale to\u00a0US-based technology firm, 2U, making it one of the most valuable startups in the South Africa’s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":66436,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,2763],"class_list":["post-204880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-startup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204880"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205134,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204880\/revisions\/205134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}