OLX.com Aims for the Global Classified Listings Crown

French born Princetonian Fabrice Grinda built hiscareer as a serial entrepreneur by taking online business concepts developed in the US to global audiences. Now as Co-CEO of OLX.com he aspires to offer the best free global listings site on the web; "a Craigslist 2.0 for the world with functionalityy as good or better than listings on vertical subject sites."

With online marketing experience in southern and eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin Americaand $23 million in venture capital from the likes of General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital, OLX.com is operating in 39 languages and countless dialects providing strong competition for newspapers all over the world.  

The global recession, eBay's consistent missteps with sellers and Craiglist's move to charge for high value listing categories all give Fabrice reason to believe he can build a consistent growth business on the back of this universal transactional utility. By asking for just an e-mail address, providing cross-site AJAX search tools and enhanced tagging, a fast WAP application that circumvents limited infrastructure in many countries and empowers zillions of cell phone users and by keeping everything free to both buyers and sellers, he expects to take share from the US leaders even though OLX is hardly known in the US. Simultaneously he is expanding the reach of his classified sites to under-served and under-penetrated geographies. His strategy of PPC-driven growth combined with seven acquisitions in places like Spain, Denmark, China, Argentina, Italy and Russia, position OLX to exploit emerging markets and take on established western European classified leaders.

The business model is hedged by providing white label listings applications to as many as 20 social networks around the globe. OLX is behind classified listings on Friendster.com and Sonico.com;the Facebook of Latin America. Using these tactics and revenue streams the site expects to break even by early 2010.

From the search-and-find perspective humans are "shockinglysimilar globally when it comes to using classified sites," Fabrice says.  And while there are local differences among categories and different kinds of merchandise or services are more active in different areas, the utility model offers scale at predicable operating costs and margins. Bad times accelerate the number of listings and the number of searches in selected categories; especially jobs and real estate. But the biggest challenge or complication is digital security to ward off endless attempts at spam and scams. On a global basis OLX deletes 66 percent of the 2 million listing attempts made each week and uses a wide array of security tools and tactics to protect users and escape hackers. 

The bottom line?

To be a successful entrepreneur you don't have to invent or re-invent the wheel. Sometimes you just have to expose it to people who haven't seen it yet or can't get or make one themselves. 

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Google gets into the messy business of telecommunications. I don’t mean to say Google’s day job is easy but the telecom market gets it involved with government agencies like the FCC on a more regular basis. Like many other large telcos the company will have to spend more and more money lobbying and technology differentiation may be less important than government regulations in ensuring future success.

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From the search-and-find perspective humans are "shockinglysimilar globally when it comes to using classified sites," Fabrice says. And while there are local differences among categories and different kinds of merchandise or services are more active in different areas, the utility model offers scale at predicable operating costs and margins. Bad times accelerate the number of listings and the number of searches in selected categories;