The Venture Codex

Participated · Equity · Jan 2015

Saltside Technologies operates classified-ad marketplaces serving emerging markets, with product footprints in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Ghana and Pakistan. The company reports about 6 million monthly visitors across those markets, where roughly 200 million people live and most access via mobile. Saltside competes with local classifieds such as Howzit and N-Soko and with Craigslist Kenya. The business is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, where its development team is based, while it also maintains staff on the ground in the countries it serves. Co-founders Nils Hammar and James Peck were early employees at Skype; Hammar previously founded Kindo, which sold to MyHeritage. The company plans to use new capital to scale further in its existing markets. Saltside operates localized classifieds sites including ikman.lk (Sri Lanka), Bikroy.com (Bangladesh), Tonaton.com (Ghana) and Dekho.com.pk (Pakistan). The company focuses on car and property listings and targets markets where it has first-mover advantage. It is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, with a development team there and local staff in Dubai, Bangladesh, Ghana, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Saltside has 150 employees and says listings are growing at 300% annually; its sites draw hundreds of millions of views per month across an audience of around 200 million people. The company cites strong near-term growth in internet penetration and an online-advertising market in these geographies expected to reach $2.8 billion by 2016. Saltside has raised capital to scale these operations and local teams.