User:BC1278/sandbox/OLX-rev

OLX Group is a global online marketplace operating in 45 countries, and is the largest online classified ads company in India, Pakistan, Brazil, Poland, and the Philippines. South African media group Naspers acquired a majority of the firm in 2010 and 95% of the company in 2014.

History
Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford started the company in 2006 as a Craigslist alternative for the world outside of the United States. The marketplace is an online platform for buying and selling services and goods such as electronics, furniture, household goods, cars and bikes.

In 2006, the firm acquired Mundoanuncio.com, a classifieds site targeting the Hispanic market and in 2007, the company made an investment in the Chinese classifieds site in Edeng.cn. The marketplace rolled out "Web 2.0" features in 2008, such as social network widgets, improved search, Ajax-based editors, interactive maps, and mobile versions. In 2009, they 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 the marketplace enabled video, image and mobile features, in 39 languages reaching 90 countries.

In 2010, a majority of the company was acquired by the South African media group Naspers, which bought out the existing investors. 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. In late 2016, the company launched Tradus.com as a heavy machinery classifieds site. It acquired AutoTrader, an online South African car marketplace, in 2017.

CEO Alec Oxenford said in a 2014 interview that the firm adopted a "Martian approach" to international expansion, launching in India, the largest available market, rather than in the United States. The company has 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. He said that the marketplace acted as a “wealth creator” in emerging markets, enabling people to easily monetize their services and possessions.

The firm had 11 billion page views, 200 million monthly active users, 25 million listings, and 8.5 million transactions per month in 2014. About 54% of the company's global traffic, then 240 million unique monthly visits, came from mobile in 2014. By May 2018, the platform had 330 million monthly users.

Markets
The company began to advertise in India in 2011. It said had 60% of the online classified market share in India in 2013, with 80% of usage on mobile. The company said 1.5 billion monthly page views were generated from India in 2014. OLX became vernacular for 'selling' in India, in the form of 'OLX Pe Bech De', ' OLX Kar Do' and 'OLX it'. About 90% of listings in India came from used mobile and electronics, used home and household goods, and used cars & bikes. Used cars account for 45% of page views, as of 2015. In 2016, the company said about 72% of all used cars sold monthly in India were from transactions on the site. The number of used car sales on the site in India grew 100 per cent in 2016 from 2015. About 200,000 vehicles with a value of $1 billion are sold monthly on the site compared to 95,000 cars worth $470 million in 2015. In addition to continuing its free listings, the company said in 2015 it would start to sell priority space for premium listings.

The firm and bomnegocio.com, owned by Norway's Schibsted, combined in 2014 to create the largest classifieds site in Brazil. The company began offering programmatic advertising in Brazil 2016, accessing 43 million unique visitors and three billion monthly page views.

In Kenya, more than 10,000 farmers used the marketplace to sell their produce and livestock in 2016, especially chicken and cattle, and fresh produce. Traditionally in Kenya, farmers and buyers paid brokers a fee to assist with sales. The transition to online selling enabled some farmers to cut out brokers and reduce transportation costs. The company said it saw the need for the category after it saw farmers listing livestock for sales in its pets category.

The company opened a site in Nigeria in 2012. The company said in 2015 it had more than three million sellers and buyers in the country. The firm purchased its Nigerian competitor, TradeStable. In February 2018, the company announced the shut down of its Nigerian office, with the Nigerian marketplace to be run remotely.

In 2008, the firm's growth in the Philippines was attributed to its partnership with Friendster. The Philippine classified ads site Sulit rebranded as OLX Philipines in 2013 and the the firm merged with classified site Ayos Dito in 2015.