OLX, a company competing with classifieds site Craigslist, but more popular outside of the U.S. than it is here, has raised $13 million in a second round of financing.
The company, based in New York and Buenos Aires, is like Craigslist in that it focuses on urban centers to ensure mass. To gain visibility, it partnered with social networking company Friendster — which has also has more traction outside of the U.S.
The two-year-old company was started by Fabrice Grinda and Alex Oxenford. Grinda blogs about the recent funding here, saying it will help the company expand but also tide it over during the economic downturn.
It operates in 40 countries in 15 languages.
The funding comes from General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund and DN Capital. This adds to the $10 million the company raised in September 2006 from the same VCs and various angels.
The company is trying to differentiate itself by offering more modern features than Craigslist does — Web 2.0 bells and whistles like letting you easily promote listings on other websites, like MySpace, Xanga, and Blogspot.
2 Comments
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Yakov said:
They could win in emerging Internet markets if they move fast. though, the competition is strong there, for example, in Russia.
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wtf said:
they’ve blown thru $10M in 18 months? Can’t be a terribly expensive website to operate. Given current burn I guess they’ve got 2 more years to start making some serious profits or the VC’s will own the entire thing.
