OLX Brazil CEO Says Company Can Still Disrupt Despite its Size

In Brazil, there is no question of who the market leader is in the cars and property verticals. OLX has the backing of two giants in Adevinta and Prosus and is consolidating and disrupting these industries as it does so.

The company’s CEO Andries Oudshoorn gave a talk at last week’s Global Online Marketplaces Summit in which he revealed some interesting numbers around market dominance and was candid about OLX’s strategy:

• OLX is transitioning to increasingly aim its services to professional sellers (real estate agents and car dealers) with a 68% CAGR in this space from 2016-2019.

• 25% of all new and used cars sold in Brazil are done so through OLX.

• OLX is top of mind for 56% of consumers in the cars vertical and 52% in real estate.

• There is a symbiotic relationship between Brazilians culturally accepting the idea of selling used goods (known locally as desapega) and the growth of OLX. In 2010 only 10% of the population had sold goods online, the figure is now 50%.

• OLX will overcome threats from huge e-commerce players such as Amazon and Google as well as from smaller local disruptors by offering the “transactional at scale” and local expertise and partnerships that none of the others can offer.

• Speaking about digitization of the transaction, Oudshoorn said that complex bureaucratic processes were “a nature of the reality in Brazil”, but that banks, licencing agencies and others were starting to see the benefits of going online.

• On the question of MercadoLivre being the main competitor to OLX: “MercadoLivre is doing an incredibly good job of developing ecommerce in Brazil...we get a lot of inspiration from them.”

You can rewatch Andries’s talk from The Global Online Marketplaces Summit as well as videos of all of the other speakers on our Youtube channel here.