Who Owns Takealot?

Takealot — South Africa's largest online retailer — is owned by Naspers, not Amazon and not Prosus. It began in 2011 when former MWEB chief Kim Reid and the US fund Tiger Global bought the small e-tailer Take2 and relaunched it as takealot.com 1.

Who actually holds it. The Cape Town–born media-and-tech group Naspers took 46.5% in 2015, merging its own Kalahari.com into Takealot, then lifted its stake to 96% by 2018 1. Naspers now describes Takealot.com as a business it wholly owns 2, and holds it directly under Naspers South Africa — not under Prosus, the Amsterdam-listed arm that houses the group's Tencent stake. The two are bound in a cross-holding in which Prosus owns roughly 49% of Naspers while Naspers controls about 57% of Prosus 2.

Why that matters. South Africa's biggest online store is held at home — but by the same group whose real fortune was a 2001 bet on China's Tencent, not on local retail. For most of its life Takealot was a cost centre: it turned its first-ever annual profit only in its 2026 financial year, on revenue of about R16 billion 1, fifteen years after launch, and now grows even as global giants chase the same shoppers.

What it means for value capture. The upside of local e-commerce accrues to a listed South African parent — a better outcome than a foreign acquirer, but one whose attention and capital are global. Set against the field in Who's Buying Africa, Takealot is the rare consumer-internet asset that scaled and stayed home; the open question is whether its profits get reinvested locally or routed to the next Tencent. Compare the continent's other big e-commerce name in Who Owns Jumia, and the home-grown machine in Who Owns Shoprite.