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What Top Three Factors Lead to a New Brand's Success? Ask OLX

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This article is more than 9 years old.

No doubt you’ve heard it said that success is often a matter of being in the right place at the right time. When it comes to brands, however, I’d like to add one more factor to this notion. Greater success is a matter of being in the right place at the right time with the right idea. This is the equation that has turned OLX into one of the world’s largest online classified sites. Now, fair to say, while most of those living in the United States may never have heard of OLX, millions of other people in over 40 countries around the world have not only heard of OLX, but have turned it into one of the most impressive technology start-ups launched outside Silicon Valley.

By way of explanation, although OLX is, in one respect, similar to Craigslist and eBay, a far-reaching virtual marketplace through which people can buy, sell, and exchange goods and services, in another respect, it is quite dissimilar. And, that’s where the “right idea” comes in. More than simply solving a basic problem, which is something all strong brands do, OLX solves a problem of a higher order, above and beyond the convenience of transacting one-to-one commerce. It serves a basic humanitarian need vital and wholly relevant to those in the countries it serves. It was during a discussion  with OLX’s co-founder, Alec Oxenford that I learned how OLX came to be, and why it is making a difference in so many peoples’ lives. Here is just part of our conversation:

You’ve been an entrepreneur for over 15 years. After so many successful initiatives, what sparked the launch of OLX?

My partner, Fabrice Grinda, and I had seen how Craigslist had developed in the United States from a very small site that consumers mostly ignored, and that the institutional environment either completely ignored or laughed at. Then, of course, we all saw how, beginning in just a few cities, it grew, without any advertising, into an incredibly relevant and huge platform creating phenomenal value for buyers and sellers. We realized there was no parallel situation in most of the emerging world. More than this, where in the United States, in which there are many other alternatives to buy and sell pre-owned goods, say a garage sale or a flea market, or a newspaper classified section, these options don’t exist in emerging markets. And, then, because ownership of digital devices with Internet connection was just starting to grow within these populations, there was not yet any competing online classified model.

So what you saw was a real gap in the marketplace, one of the first ingredients required to build a brand. A platform that allows people to buy and sell used goods online not only comparable to Craigslist, but incredibly relevant to the populations you were hoping to serve as a result of a lack of any other alternatives.

We saw this perfect empty space in the market, in combination with the fact that, when we launched OLX in 2006, the mobile revolution was just beginning to gain momentum in our target areas. We knew the demand would be there. We needed to create a supply source. We were first movers.

You always have the advantage when you’re a first mover and you deliver a great experience. Your brand becomes the proxy name for the space, or the category, like Google, or Kleenex, for example. But beyond the functional end benefit of your product, you saw another powerful end benefit relative to OLX. Talk about this.

When you consider the regions in which we initially took off, say Nigeria and Kenya, or Pakistan, India and Brazil, people in these areas have very little opportunity to make money out of their dormant wealth, their used goods. They don’t have assets like real estate. We provide a liquid market for them. OLX allows people to exchange their dormant assets for cash which they can then exchange for basic services like healthcare, security or educational opportunities. We create tangible capital, and we create social capital. We enable interactions between people and we empower people to create value for themselves and their families.

The best brands have a foundational purpose, in most cases to help make peoples’ lives better in some significant way. Giving people a platform that empowers them to be able to take control of their lives, make more of their lives with what they’ve got, is an incredibly aspirational purpose.

We give them tools to take life into their own hands. It’s positive all the way around. If you think about the markets in which we operate, people have not always had control of their lives. There is a hostile context, a hostile history. Giving people control to do something positive with their lives that has significant impact is extremely valuable. So much so that in Nigeria, for example, we have a case of priests including OLX in their sermons, explaining how it can allow people to generate well-being for themselves and for their neighbors. We don’t pay them to do this. It just happens.

OLX gives people in emerging markets a platform on which to sell and buy used goods in good repair. Selling a used shirt to a neighbor means money for the seller. It means the buyer doesn’t have to buy a new one, which makes it more cost-effective. And the whole process has the added benefit of knitting together communities, not to mention being eco-friendly. The best brands have always been about a keeping a promise or solving a problem. The more levels on which you can operate, the stronger your brand and your business. You solve problems on multiple levels.

And we have been able to do so with marginal initial investment. We’ve managed to become top of mind in many markets because we were the first ones to identify a problem and offer the solution, and we made the technology very simple to use. Word-of-mouth has been phenomenal. The OLX brand is also unique in the fact that most brands trickle into the underdeveloped markets very slowly, after becoming powerful in the developed world. Before it was only the cool Silicon Valley start-up that went global. Very seldom do you see a company that becomes extremely relevant in big countries outside the United States and then move to that market. It’s very special. We’re the very first consumer-facing e-commerce brand to do so.