Cape Town-based Silvertree Internet Holdings, the parent of price comparison website PriceCheck, has acquired a similar business in Nigeria, TopCheck, for an undisclosed sum.
The move, Silvertree said, creates Africa’s largest online price comparison group.
TopCheck is Nigeria’s largest price comparison site for financial services, offering free online comparisons for insurance products, loans and broadband Internet plans, Silvertree said in a statement.
The website was founded by Christian Wiesner, Jose Figueiredo and Thomas Pilar in 2014, and is headquartered in Lagos and Berlin. The start-up, which calls itself the “Moneysupermarket of Africa”, raised €1m in venture capital in 2015.
TopCheck will join Silvertree subsidiary Compare Africa Group, which is active in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, and offers online price comparison of goods and services through various websites, including Compareguru and PriceCheck, which was recently acquired from Naspers.
Silvertree said in a statement that it has been active in acquiring Nigerian technology companies in the past, having taken over Nigerian insured(dot)ng from Spark (2015) and deals site Dealdey (2016) from Kinnevik.
Manuel Koser, co-founder and MD of Silvertree, said the group wants to replicate the success of Check24 in the German financial services and insurance comparison space. “TopCheck joining our portfolio is another step in building Africa’s largest comparison conglomerate.”
Christian Wiesner and Thomas Pilar will step aside as joint MDs of TopCheck, but will continue to work with Compare Africa Group as advisors. Ryan Marx, Compare Africa’s MD, will take over as MD of TopCheck with immediate effect. — (c) 2017 Bloomberg LP
