OLX
 |
|
| Incorporated | |
| Industry | Marketplace classifieds forums |
| Founded | 2006 |
| Founder | Fabrice Grinda, Alec Oxenford (CEO) |
|
Number of locations
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Global |
|
Area served
|
Global |
|
Number of employees
|
1200 |
| Website | www.olx.com |
OLX, founded in 2006, is a global online marketplace, operating in 45 countries, and is the largest online classified ads company in India, Brazil, Pakistan and Poland.
Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford founded the company as a Craigslist alternative for the world outside of the United States. South African media group Naspers, acquired a majority of OLX in 2010 and 95% of the company in 2014.
The OLX marketplace facilitates buying and selling services and goods such as electronics, furniture, household goods, cars and bikes. OLX had 11 billion page views, 200 million monthly active users, 25 million listings, and 8.5 million transactions per month in 2014.
Payments between buyer and seller are made offline, so OLX does not have to deal with varying payment infrastructure availability in each of its markets. In 2006, OLX acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market and in 2007, OLX made an investment Chinese classifieds site in Edeng.cn. In 2008, OLX's growth in the Philippines was attributed to its partnership with Friendster.
OLX invested in "Web 2.0" features in 2008, such as social network widgets, improved search, Ajax-based editors, interactive maps, and mobile versions.
In 2009, OLX partnered with Hi5, a social network, which at the time had 60 million users. Hi5 implemented OLX features, such as displaying ads and sharing ads with friends, and OLX enabled video, image and mobile features, in 39 languages and 90 countries.
In 2014, CEO Alec Oxenford said that OLX adopted a "Martian approach" to international expansion, launching in India, the largest available market, rather than in the United States. Naspers consolidated its online classified operations in the Philippines, Thailand, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Indonesia and re-branded them as OLX.
The company invested heavily in television advertising. Oxenford said that adoption of the internet by more than three billion people has made television more effective as a driver of traffic to websites or apps than it was during the early dot-com period, when television advertising didn't work well for websites.
Oxenford has said that OLX acted as a “wealth creator” in emerging markets, enabling people to easily monetize their services and possessions.
About 54% of OLX's global traffic, then 240 million unique monthly visits, came from mobile in 2014.
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