Olx

Founded in 2006 by Fabrice Grinda and Alec Oxenford, the online marketplace OLX has its
roots in Argentina. The company today functions in over 40 countries, of which it has
emerged out as a stronghold in countries like India, Pakistan, Brazil, Portugal, Poland,
Ukraine, Nigeria, Philippines, and Kenya. The online classifieds website was funded by
several firms such as Nexus Venture Partners, General Catalyst Partners, and Bessemer
Venture Partners, to name a few. This was until a major part of the company was taken over
by Naspers, a South African media group, who succeeded in procuring the then investors.
OLX had a standing of $30 million before being purchased by Naspers.

Before moving on to answer your question about how does OLX make money, let us have a
look at some of the important statistics of OLX:

 It stands as the largest online classifieds website in countries like India, Portugal,
Poland, and Brazil
 OLX has achieved major success in India where it stands as the largest marketplace
 The success of OLX forced Google to shut down Google Trader, its classifieds
website
 Argentina-based OLX is at par with social media sites like Snapchat, Instagram, and
Facebook in obtaining more than 200 million monthly visits
 The web page views of OLX are more than 8.5 billion and has procured more than 25
million listings
 The number of OLX transactions are more than 8.5 million

Business Model of OLX

 If we break up the OLX business model into parts, here’s how it functions:
 The Business Model of OLX is actually scale-dependent
 The website acts as a classifieds portal where customers can buy and sell goods
 OLX spends large amounts of money in order to garner more and more user traffic
and greater frequency and number of listings
 The high traffic is put to use to earn revenue by monetizing the number of clicks and
searches

How does OLX make money?

Unlike other online marketplaces where website acts as an affiliate to sellers’ products, OLX
has a different ball-game altogether. The prime source of revenue for OLX is through
advertisements, Google Custom Search Engine, Sponsored Links and Sponsored Listings.
Daraz
Daraz was founded as a fashion retailer in Pakistan in 2012, but changed to a general
marketplace strategy and business model in 2015 when it also launched operations in
Bangladesh and Myanmar.
In September 2015, Daraz secured EUR50 million in its Series B funding in order to expand
operations in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. CDC Group, a state-owned Development
Finance Institution (DFI) in the, invested Rs 3450…01 million alongside a Rs 5175…02
million investment from Daraz existing majority shareholder, Asia Internet Holdings.
In July 2016, Daraz Group acquired Kaymu, a consumer-to-consumer online marketplace in
South Asia, and with the acquisition began operations in Sri Lanka and Nepal.
In May 2018, Daraz Group announced that it had been acquired by Alibaba Group for an
undisclosed amount. This move comes about two years after Alibaba's acquisition of Lazada
Group, which was also a startup by Rocket Internet Group in South East Asian market.
Alibaba Group also runs Singapore's Redmart and owns stakes in India's Paytm and
Indonesia's Tokopedia. Daraz Group's five markets (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar,
& Sri Lanka) cover more than 460 million people of which 60% are under the age of 35. In
order to digitalise the logistics ecosystem and to improve the delivery standards, Daraz has
built its own logistics company, DEX, in all of its five markets.

In Feb 2019, Daraz downsized its manpower by employee layoffs.