Johnnic e-Ventures, undaunted by the recent demise of dot-bomb Metropolis Transactive Holdings, is investing R50 million in six new Internet ventures.
Speaking last week at the Fastec e-conference forum at the Wild Coast, e-Ventures CEO Neil Jacobsohn said his company had studied 120 business propositions, discarded 114, and is ready to go ahead with six new ventures which complement the existing e-Venture divisions.
Jacobsohn is adamant that e-Ventures will not go the same route as Metropolis.
"Metropolis focused on vertical niches. When I spoke to Jason Xenopolis (Metropolis CEO), I told him the vertical markets were too small to sustain. e-Ventures has built an horizontal offering and we are targeting a much bigger market."
The new offering from e-Ventures is a human resources sub-portal called Virtually HR, which Jacobsohn said would complement and leverage off the existing CareerJunction recruitment portal.
He said the recruitment portal has been moving ahead nicely and is "on the brink of becoming profitable".
e-Ventures also plans to shift the focus of search portal Ananzi. "We will make Ananzi a zone rather than a search portal, although its search facility will still draw the most visitors."
Ananzi will offer more along the lines of what the Yahoo page currently offers, with news pulled from I-Net Bridge, entertainment, and jobs from CareerJunction in an effort to attract visitors to a "lifestyle zone" rather than a search engine.
Jacobsohn explained that e-Ventures saw "market rings" rather than niches. "We see that individuals act as a multitude of players and can be targeted on this basis. A businessman can go into work and be an employee, an investor, a consumer and a supplier all in one morning. We aim to fulfil all those needs within the group and keep him in our ring of offerings."
Jacobsohn noted that e-Ventures aims to attract the individual rather than a specific market.
"Information has been democratised by the Internet, now anyone can get live share prices, news, and any other information at the click of a button. Companies participating in a news dissemination environment must give themselves a differentiator over their competition."
Consumers now have the power to act immediately on information, "The Internet has lowered the barriers between knowing and doing forever," Jacobsohn concluded.
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