OLX and hi5, both challengers to dominating juggernauts in their respective fields (online classifieds and social networking), have teamed up to expose each others’ admittedly vast but geographically spread audience to one another. OLX says it currently boasts 70 million unique visitors each month across 90 countries, largely thanks to existing partnerships with services that have historically seen most of their growth in Latin-America and Asia (Friendster, MySpace Lat-Am, Fotolog etc.), while hi5 claims 60 million monthly unique visitors from 200 countries.
Even with a reasonable amount of overlap accounted for, these are significant numbers, albeit in countries where potential advertising income is generally much lower than it is in the U.S. and Europe. OLX (a competitor to Craigslist in the United States) and hi5 (a competitor to the likes of Facebook and MySpace on a global level) claim the fresh partnership serves to consolidate both companies’ hold on the Latin American market, while making way for accelerated growth in the rest of the world.
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.
Microsoft Live Expo, their experiment with classified listings that launched in early 2006, will be shut down on July 31, says a notice posted on the site. New listings have already been suspended.
This comes as Craigslist solidifies its position as the top free listings service. Other services like Kijiji (owned by eBay) and Oodle (which recently partnered with Walmart) continue to grow. Recently Kijiji has made waves about their impressive growth rate. And other classified listing startups continue to get funded.
There’s just no room for Microsoft in the classified listings space, it seems. It joins the deadpool.
A screen shot of what it looked like in the good days is below.
According to co-founder Fabrice Grinda, “OLX is probably the largest classified site no one has ever heard of.” And now it’s also the most funded classified site no one has ever heard of, having secured an additional $13.5M in Series B funding today from General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund, and DN Capital.
The round brings OLX’s total funding up to $23.5M after raising a previously undisclosed Series A round of $10M in September 2006 with the same VCs and various angels.
Americans are not likely to have heard of OLX because its popularity lies mainly outside of the United States in places like Spain, India, Portugal, Mexico, South America, China, and the Philippines. It has established a presence in a total of 40 countries while supporting 15 languages. 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 92 employees working out of New York, Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Moscow.
The idea behind OLX, in addition to becoming Craigslist for the rest of the world, is to improve on the technology of first generation classified sites. Grinda prides OLX in its Web 2.0 features which include social network widgets, better search, Ajax-based editors, interactive maps, and mobile versions.
OLX was launched in June 2006 by Grinda with co-founder Alec Oxenford. In addition to taking on Craigslist, OLX faces off against eBay’s Kijiji, which poses the biggest international threat because it has also taken an aggressive global campaign.
