OLX Group Shutters South African Horizontal, Hires Tim Davis as CTO

The South African media giant Naspers has confirmed that it has shuttered its domestic OLX ZA portal and is redirecting users to its autos vertical (Autotrader) and property vertical (Property24) instead.

The move was confirmed to local tech magazine TechCentral earlier today by Sjoerd Nikkelen, OLX Group GM for Asia, Middle East and Africa who told the publication that "This [decision] is ultimately an indication of the progress we have made in South Africa over recent years and symbolic of how we as OLX Group continue to adjust ourselves,”

The relationship between Naspers and Prosus is similar to that of fellow classifieds and publishing giant Schibsted with its spinoff company Adevinta which operates classifieds titles away from Scandanavia. OLX Group ZA is owned and operated by Naspers Amsterdam-headquartered offshoot company Prosus.

In other OLX related news, the company has announced the appointment of Tim Davis to the role of Chief Technology Officer. Davis comes from his role as VP of Engineering at the OTA Booking.com. Before that, he worked at both AWS and Microsoft.