Meet OLX, the Biggest Classified Company that is growing Fast

OLX – the world’s leading classifieds platform focused on emerging markets, both mobile and online – has reached more than 330 million active users worldwide, compared to 240 million in 2015, Naspers’ latest integrated report shows.

The classified company has garnered more than 60 million monthly new net listings on its platform.

Furthermore, OLX has recorded 75 million users that make use of its mobile apps monthly on average in 40 countries.

Co-founded in Brazil in 2006 by Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford, OLX became part of the Naspers – Africa’s largest tech and media firm Naspers – family in 2010.

In August 2010, Naspers bought 67,8% of OLX for $144 million (about R1 billion) cash. In December 2011, Africa’s biggest tech firm upped its stake to 71,5 and 95% in 2014. At the time, OLX was a classifieds business operating mainly in emerging markets, especially Latin America.

The South African-based conglomerate said in its annual report that OLX has leading market positions in 35 countries with notable gains in the US and Turkey while growing in key markets like India, Indonesia, Colombia, Egypt, Argentina and others across Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

“OLX group continues to improve monetisation in markets where it has earned leadership – particularly Russia, Poland, UAE, Portugal, Romania, and Ukraine,” said Naspers.

The classified company OLX currently employs over 4 000 people worldwide.

With some 60 million items listed each month, Naspers said: “if its community of monthly sellers was a city, it would be as big as Chennai, Rio de Janeiro and Nairobi combined – over 18 million in total”.

In the past two years, OLX has added more than 90 million new active monthly users.

In March 2015 OLX served some 240 million monthly active users worldwide and garnered 34m visits per day on average.

In that year, Naspers took a decision to be a globally operating company in classifieds by rebranding its platforms in Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe to OLX. This made OLX a top internet brand globally, with over 240 million monthly active users.

By 2014 financial year, the group successfully migrated local brands to OLX in Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, and Eastern Europe. This was part of Naspers’ plan to fast-track the process of shifting from a portfolio of disparate and local brand names to global brand alignment by transforming OLX into the world’s largest brand for consumer-to-consumer trade.

In March 2013, as part of its growth, Naspers merged its Slando.ru and OLX.ru assets with a R462 million ($50 million) investment in exchange for a fully diluted 18,6% interest in Avito to create the leading general classifieds business in Russia.

In the same year, Naspers wanted to consolidate its position in the global classified industry by merging Portugal OLX with a local market leader, FixeAds, to entrench our position in that market.

OLX is free to use and makes money selling promoted listings to users. (Payments are conducted offline, which has allowed OLX to avoid dealing with legacy payment infrastructure in each market it enters.)

The South African-based company also owns a majority stake in Avito, letgo and Dubizzle.

For more read: Is US-based Letgo Likely to Pay Off for Africa’s Internet Giant Naspers?