Chris Abraham » OLX

Naspers Makes Strategic Investment In OLX

Chris Abraham — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 21:10:05 +0000

In a big announcement, OLX has finally publicly announced that they just received a strategic investment from South African media conglomerate Naspers in the range of $20 to $40 million. The full story by Leena Rao is over on TechCrunch, Naspers Makes Strategic Investment In Craigslist Competitor OLX

We’ve been hearing recently that South African media conglomerate and recent DST investor Naspers was sniffing around Crasiglist competitor OLX. Today, we confirmed with OLX co-founders Alec Oxenford and Fabrice Grinda that Naspers has made a strategic investment in the online classifieds company.

While Buenos Aires-based OLX is not disclosing the amount invested, we’ve heard from sources that the investment was in the range of $20 to $40 million. Naspers also bought out the shares of all of OLX’s previous investors, which include Nexus Venture Partners, The Founders Fund, DN Capital, General Catalyst Partners, and Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to this round of funding, OLX had raised nearly $30 million.

While the free classifieds site has trouble competing with Craigslist in the U.S., OLX has a strong user base internationally, and is the current leader in Latin America and Asia. The company, which is seeing over 125 million unique visitors per month worldwide, has a presence in 90 countries in 40 languages.

In 2007 OLX has made an investment in Edeng.cn, a Chinese free classifieds site and acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a Craigslist-like classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market, in 2006. OLX also has a hold on the Philippines market thanks to a white label partnership with Friendster. And OLX scored a similar deal with social network hi5.

So why does Naspers want a stake in OLX? The conglomerate has been making a number of investments in the emerging Latin American market, including BrandsClub, Grupo Abril, Movile and Buscapé. According to a joint statement made by OLX and Naspers, the South African firm’s long-term, general strategy “is to acquire/establish a core internet community within a specific country/region and to then expand the operations by adding additional services such as e-commerce, communication, social networking, content and gaming.”

Via Marketing Conversation via TechCrunch. Disclosure: OLX is a client of Abraham Harrison

Fabrice Grinda a 2010 Game Changer at New York Enterprise Report

Chris Abraham — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:44:06 +0000

My friend and Abraham Harrison’s client, Fabrice Grinda of OLX, has been recognized as one of the 2010 Game Changers in the May, 2010, issue of The New York Enterprise Report:

Fabrice Grinda, 2010 Game Changers, New York Enterprise Report

How he’s changing the game: “Throughout most of my life, I’ve been inspired by looking at things that work and making them work better,” says Grinda. Back in 1998, Grinda co-founded Aucland S.A., a European version of eBay, and it became one of the top three auction sites on the continent. He subsequently founded Zingy, a mobile ringtone company, that he grew to $200 million in content sales and sold four years later for 80 million dollars. An avid user of Craigslist, Grinda saw a lot of business potential in creating a free classified site with an improved interface that made it possible for users to search at a global level, embed videos, and post in different languages. “Classifieds are too expensive in many markets around the world, especially emerging countries,” says Grinda. “I wanted to share the free community aspects of Craigslist with the rest of the world,” says Grinda. OLX earns revenue by selling space on the site to advertisers. Grinda got the start-up running in about three months for an initial investment of $30,000. Some of OLX’s features that have changed classified, if not e-commerce as a whole, include a distance field allowing you to see postings within a certain geographic range; the ability to post items in virtual worlds (e.g., SecondLife); the ability to include videos in listings; RSS feeds; the ability to display ads on social networking profiles (such as Facebook and Twitter), and the ability to access the site from mobile phones.

Recent Highlights: According to Grinda, OLX’s recent highlights include “breathtaking growth.” The site is now available in 91 countries and 41 languages.OLX gets 100 million unique users to the site each month—more than Twitter or MySpace—making it one of the largest sites in the world. “Not everyone has heard of us in the US, but we’re much bigger in Brazil and India,” says Grinda.

What’s Next: In addition to continuing to grow OLX around the world, Grinda and his team are in the process of releasing an iPhone app and refocusing their mobile business. Grinda also is an angel investor in 28 start-up Internet companies.

My Client OLX Expands to São Paulo, Brazil

Chris Abraham — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:06:19 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

We’re all pretty excited about how well our client, Fabrice Grinda, and his online classifieds site, OLX, is doing. So well, in fact, that they just opened a new office in São Paulo, Brazil. Kudos to the gang at OLX global and especially to the Latin American offices in Argentina and now Brazil.

Our Client, Global Classifieds Giant OLX Expands in Brazil

Huge Growth Expected in Leading Latin American Online Market

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – (February 4, 2010) – OLX, already present online in 90 countries, has announced the opening of a new office in Brazil. OLX.com.br has grown by 450% in the last two years and already counts 14 million visits per month in Brazil, with more than 1 million published items. The online classifieds company expects continued strong growth, aiming for 20 millions visits per month in 2010.

“The new office complements OLX’s presence in Latin America and allows us to be closer to our local clients, create marketing action plans and provide better technical support and stronger client relationships,” says Rodrigo Ribeirão, head of operations of the new Brazilian unit. Through those efforts, OLX anticipates attracting an even bigger Brazilian customer base, advertising and buying and selling online.

OLX offers seven categories of ads: real estate; autos, motorcycles and boats; community; classes; jobs; meeting people and services. The market for autos, real estate and jobs has the highest demand, representing more than 1 million ads published in Brazil and around 40 million around the world.

OLX sees Brazil as a very promising market since the country already has 67 million internet users and 14 million of them visit the OLX.com.br site every month. “We see Brazil as one of the most attractive online markets in the world. With the largest and most mature online market in Latin America, our goal in having a local presence is to better understand the Brazilian internet user and adapt our products to the needs and preferences of the local buyer and seller. Furthermore, with the opening of the Brazilian office, we expect our local activities to grow by 175% in the next two years, reaching 3.5 million active ads on the site,” explains Alec Oxenford, founder and CEO of OLX.

About OLX

OLX is the next generation of free online classifieds. OLX is used in over 90 countries in 40 languages. The company was co-founded in March 2006 by Internet entrepreneurs Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford. OLX is privately held. The company is based in New York, NY and Buenos Aires, Argentina and operates two leading online classifieds networks hosted at www.olx.com and www.mundoanuncio.com. For more information, visit: www.olx.com.br

CONTACT:

Fabrice Grinda
Co-CEO
OLX, Inc.
#(917) 371.5441
fabrice@olx.com

Global Classifieds Giant OLX Expands in Brazil

priya — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 17:27:01 +0000

Huge Growth Expected in Leading Latin American Online Market

SAO PAULO, BRAZIL – (February 4, 2010) – OLX, already present online in 90 countries, has announced the opening of a new office in Brazil. OLX.com.br has grown by 450% in the last two years and already counts 14 million visits per month in Brazil, with more than 1 million published items. The online classifieds company expects continued strong growth, aiming for 20 millions visits per month in 2010.

“The new office complements OLX’s presence in Latin America and allows us to be closer to our local clients, create marketing action plans and provide better technical support and stronger client relationships,” says Rodrigo Ribeirão, head of operations of the new Brazilian unit. Through those efforts, OLX anticipates attracting an even bigger Brazilian customer base, advertising and buying and selling online.

OLX offers seven categories of ads: real estate; autos, motorcycles and boats; community; classes; jobs; meeting people and services. The market for autos, real estate and jobs has the highest demand, representing more than 1 million ads published in Brazil and around 40 million around the world.

OLX sees Brazil as a very promising market since the country already has 67 million internet users and 14 million of them visit the OLX.com.br site every month. “We see Brazil as one of the most attractive online markets in the world. With the largest and most mature online market in Latin America, our goal in having a local presence is to better understand the Brazilian internet user and adapt our products to the needs and preferences of the local buyer and seller. Furthermore, with the opening of the Brazilian office, we expect our local activities to grow by 175% in the next two years, reaching 3.5 million active ads on the site,” explains Alec Oxenford, founder and CEO of OLX.

About OLX

OLX is the next generation of free online classifieds. OLX is used in over 90 countries in 40 languages. The company was co-founded in March 2006 by Internet entrepreneurs Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford. OLX is privately held. The company is based in New York, NY and Buenos Aires, Argentina and operates two leading online classifieds networks hosted at www.olx.com and www.mundoanuncio.com. For more information, visit: www.olx.com.br

CONTACT:

Fabrice Grinda
Co-CEO
OLX, Inc.
#(917) 371.5441
fabrice@olx.com

Loic Le Meur interviews Fabrice Grinda at LeWeb

Chris Abraham — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:44:45 +0000

Our client Fabrice Grinda was recently in Paris at LeWeb 09 after spending the last seven months abroad away from his New York City home. While at LeWeb, Loic Le Meur conducted a Fireside Chat with Fabrice Grinda, Co-CEO, OLX, Inc. Please check it out — it is the perfect representation of who Fabrice Grinda is and what his vision is for OLX.com both Internationally and in the United States. Plus, as a bonus, Fabrice is bombastic so he talks cold turkey about what it is like to do business in France, his home, versus in the United States; how simple-minded we indeed are as human creatures, and how much risk and suffering one really must go through to become an overnight success. Enjoy! Via the Fabrice Grinda Blog via Socialmedia.biz and Marketing Conversation.

Classified Ad Rival OLX Challenges Craigslist

Chris Abraham — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:09:58 +0000

I have had OLX as a digital PR client of Abraham Harrison for quite a while now and we have seen them double their traffic and their popularity both in the US and around the world — we have done PR outreaches on their behalf in English, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, and soon Russian — and I am personally excited to see Business Week’s Douglas MacMillan article about the challengers to Craigslist, featuring OLX’s Fabrice Grinda, A Web of Classified Ad Rivals Challenges Craigslistkets and to crack its dominance in the U.S.

A Web of Classified Ad Rivals Challenges Craigslistkets and to crack its dominance in the U.S.

Globally, upstarts led by OLX move to edge Craigslist out of fast-growing local classified advertising markets and to crack its dominance in the U.S.

By Douglas MacMillan

Fabrice Grinda is bullish on Brazil and betting big on Internet classified ads in South America’s largest country. This year, Grinda’s New York-based company OLX opened an office in São Paulo, hired locals to translate the OLX site into Portuguese, asked top real estate brokers and auto dealers to offer low-priced listings, and recruited an executive from eBay (EBAY) in Latin America.

That approach has worked well for OLX in Mexico, Spain, Portugal, Russia, and a handful of other countries. And in September, OLX became the leading classifieds site in Brazil, surpassing local rival QueBerato in visitors, according to researcher comScore (SCOR). Craigslist, which has come to dominate the U.S. and other markets by charging no fees for most ads, is a distant No. 42 in Brazil, according to comScore. “I would like to think we have a chance to become the Craigslist of the rest of the world,” Grinda says.

Craigslist is a worthy target. Founded in 1995, the popular site for free online listings has almost singlehandedly replaced the classifieds business of print newspapers and now dominates the U.S. online market. Yet critics say Craigslist has done little to innovate, ignoring opportunities to expand through search, social networking, and wireless communication. It’s also been slow to penetrate some developing overseas markets. Internationally.Craigslist is “asleep at the wheel,” says Grinda.

New players are raring to overhaul online classifieds. “Classifieds have gone through two chapters,” says Craig Donato, co-founder and CEO of classifieds startup Oodle. First came newspapers, then Craigslist, he says. “We are focused on the third chapter.” Craigslist declined to make an executive available to comment for this story.

Most of the innovation in classifieds has happened in specific areas such as job postings on Monster (MWW) and real estate listings on Trulia. “Those sites all have a lot of traffic and they co-exist with Craigslist,” says Greg Sterling, founding principal of researcher Sterling Market Intelligence. Jobs are one of the few areas where Craigslist charges a fee for postings. It also charges for New York real estate listings.

No. 2 OLX tries harder with locals

Newcomers find it tough to challenge Craigslist’s array of listings, which range from used Apple (AAPL) iPods, to beachfront properties in Miami, to solicitations for “casual encounters,” often a euphemism for consensual sex.

Still, upstarts are making headway. In 2009, its fourth year, OLX became the world’s second-most-visited online classifieds property, leapfrogging eBay’s Kijiji sites and approaching Craigslist. Co-founder and CEO Grinda says the site encompasses 90 countries and 40 languages, compared with Craigslist’s 70 countries and 6 languages. Unlike the more established site, OLX works hands-on with locals in all its major markets to translate its services and to relate to merchants in the community, Grinda says. Hands-off Craigslist relies mainly on local sellers to post listings. It does next-to-no marketing.

OLX makes money by promoting ads to the top of listings, charging $2 to $10 a week. The company saw its first profit in June and expects more than $10 million in sales this year. “OLX is the leading classifieds site in a bunch of markets that are small today but have the opportunity to be the same size as Craigslist,” says Jeremy Levin, partner in Bessemer Partner Ventures, which contributed to OLX’s $29 million in funding. “When you add them all up you get something that’s substantially larger than the U.S. market and a business that generates—if it is successful—hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.” This year, Craigslist is expected to bring in $100 million in sales, according to the AIM Group. The closely held company doesn’t report financial figures.

Craigslist’s dated technology also gives rivals a lever, even in the U.S. Oodle, which started in San Mateo, Calif., in 2005, is pursuing what it considers a missed opportunity in connecting classifieds to social relationships on sites such as Facebook. Classifieds are “not about inviting some anonymous person over to my house to test-drive my car,” says Oodle co-founder Donato. “We’re trying to create a different experience, based on trust and reputation.”

Craigslist ads search poorly

Oodle’s approach is best demonstrated on Facebook Marketplace, a classifieds site on the social network. There, Oodle lets users buy and sell items in an environment where people and merchants use real names; users can quickly share good deals with Facebook friends. The company earns revenue by taking bids for prominently placed ads, similar to OLX, and through a subscription service that helps real estate brokers and other professionals find customers. Besides Facebook, Oodle has partnered with Wal-Mart (WMT), AOL, and News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace. Oodle has raised more than $20 million in funding, including some from Greylock Partners.

Another complaint about Craigslist is that it lacks sophisticated search. Shoppers can’t search within a limited geographic area—say, a tri-state area. Its listings typically don’t get picked up by search engines such as Google (GOOG). San Francisco-based Vast is trying to help online classifieds become more searchable by working with publishers to help users quickly retrieve listings tailored to them. For example, Vast powers the search for cars on the Web site of Kelley Blue Book.

Such online niche sectors as travel, autos, and real estate are already worth at least $1 billion apiece, says Vast CEO Kevin Law. His company collects most of its money from fees paid by advertisers each time the search engine refers a customer. Some real estate brokers end up sharing a significant percentage—sometimes more than $1,000—upon completion of a sale.

Craigslist’s new competitors may not soon edge out the classifieds king, says Kelsey Group analyst Peter Krasilovsky. Craigslist has the critical mass of millions of users that many upstarts struggle to achieve, he says. In the U.S., the service had 44.1 million unique users in October 2009, up 20% from a year earlier, according to comScore. “There’s no evidence that Craigslist has been cannibalized,” says Krasilovsky, who nevertheless contends there’s room for new players to grow. “There’s more participation in classifieds than there’s ever been before.”

Douglas MacMillan is a staff writer for BusinessWeek in New York.

OLX Evolution Story Spot from The Lime Machine

Chris Abraham — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:50:27 +0000

A The Lime Machine & Abraham Harrison joint for OLX.

OLX evolution story
by the lime machine

for more info go to www.thelimemachine.com

concept: frank merfort (the lime machine), toon van den broek (the lime machine), richard veenstra (the lime machine)
direction: frank merfort (the lime machine), toon van den broek (the lime machine), richard veenstra (the lime machine)

design: toon van den broek (the lime machine)
animation: toon van den broek (the lime machine)
compositing: toon van den broek (the lime machine)

music: frank merfort (the lime machine), richard veenstra (the lime machine)
sound design: frank merfort (the lime machine), richard veenstra (the lime machine)

Great Testimonial from Fabrice Grinda of OLX

Chris Abraham — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:58:55 +0000

Fabrice Grinda, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of OLX, popped me a testimonial for us at Abraham Harrison that is short and sweet and I am — we are — pretty proud of it.

“It’s been a true pleasure working with the team at Abraham Harrison. They increased the online awareness of OLX far more than I thought would be possible with English, Portuguese and Spanish bloggers.” — Fabrice Grinda, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, OLX

(Via Abraham Harrison and Marketing Conversation)

Fabrice Grinda and OLX on TechCrunch

Chris Abraham — Sat, 09 May 2009 13:51:16 +0000

We at Abraham Harrison LLC are excited by the amazing coverage that OLX has been getting recently, especially since they’re our client and we’re responsible for their social media outreach and digital PR. I am especially blissed out that OLX made it into TechCrunch recently — Craigslist Competitor OLX Scores $5 Million For Online Classifieds — so please check it out and please be sure to read through the comments:

Craigslist Competitor OLX Scores $5 Million For Online Classifieds

OLX, the Craigslist for the rest of the world, has raised $5 million in funding from from Nexus Capital India. The company raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from General Catalyst Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, bringing the total funding raised to $28.5 million. OLX raised $13.5 million in Series B funding in April 2008 from the same investors as above, and raised an undisclosed Series A round of $10 million in September 2006 with the same VCs and various angels participating.

While the free classifieds site has trouble competing with Craigslist in the U.S., OLX has a strong user base internationally. With a presence in more than 87 countries in 39 languages, OLX’s popularity lies mainly in Spain, India, Portugal, Mexico, South America, China, and the Philippines.

Fabrice Grinda, founder and CEO of OLX says the new investment will be used to make new acquisitions, implement site improvements, expand globally, and pursue aggressive marketing initiatives. In 2007 OLX has made an investment in Edeng.cn, a Chinese free classifieds site and acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a Craigslist-like classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market, in 2006. Much of its success in the Philippines can be attributed to its white label partnership with Friendster. Its offices are also spread over the globe with 125 employees (OLX has added almost 35 employees since last year) working in New York, Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Moscow.

While OLX may play second fiddle to Craigslist in the U.S., the site prides itself on being a second-generation free classifieds site, complete with Web 2.0 features such as social network widgets, better search capabilities, interactive maps, and mobile functionality. Craigslist has recently been under scrutiny by Attorney Generals over prostitution and the “Craigslist Murder” that have taken place in conjunction with the site. eBay’s Kijiji is also a competitor in the space, but Kijiji has set its sights on catching up to Craigslist in the U.S., even considering a name change.

CrunchBase Information

OLX

Information provided by CrunchBase

Top 10 Reasons OLX is better than Craigslist

Chris Abraham — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:11:03 +0000

Here’s the top-ten list we worked with our client OLX to create since the Interwebs loves it some top-ten lists:

OLX is 100% free forever – even for jobs and real estate
OLX has a fantastic mobile site where users can do everything they can do on the web
OLX is both global and hyper-local
OLX has a WYSIWYG editor allowing rich colorful postings without knowing HTML
OLX has direct support for video & images
OLX allows you to view listings in your local language
OLX has improved search – both across and within categories
You can search within a certain distance of your zip code
You can promote your listings on Facebook and other social networks
OLX has pictures in listing pages and search results