Mxit, the “largest social network in South Africa”, says it plans for aggressive growth in 2013 with the implementation of an extremely focused technology and business plan.
Mxit has also confirmed 41 employees have accepted voluntary redundancy packages.
A company statement said the R100 million investment secured in October 2012, which is rumoured to have been on condition the Alan Knott-Craig Jr left the company, along with the savings from company-wide cost cutting, will be channeled into “key growth areas”.
Francois Swart, Mxit’s acting Chief Executive, said: “We have just completed a thorough and intense strategic planning process, in which the whole business was involved at some level in the process. Our goal is to more than double our user base during the next year.
“To achieve this we need to take a very focused approach to what Mxit does and does not do. Regrettably that means stopping or cutting back activities in some areas.”
He added: “Rapid growth is expected by investing in user acquisition, improving the user experience, empowering our developer community through richer APIs, and further promoting the excellent results our advertising partners have been achieving over the last two years.”
The company says this will include self-service community creation tools, developer support, technology innovation, advertising partnerships and collaboration with key companies and brands.
“The ability to bring people into the social and information age, regardless of location, income or device, is a powerful opportunity. We are already bigger than Facebook on the mobile phone in South Africa and I have no doubt that we will see similar success throughout Africa. We have committed shareholders and arguably one of the strongest teams on the continent,” concluded Swart.
