Fabrice Grinda

Age: 35

Company: OLX, Inc.

Year founded: 2006

Site: olx.com

What OLX does: OLX is a global classified site free for all buyers and sellers.

How he’s changing the game: “Throughout most of my life, I’ve been inspired by looking at things that work and making them work better,” says Grinda. Back in 1998, Grinda co-founded Aucland S.A., a European version of eBay, and it became one of the top three auction sites on the continent. He subsequently founded Zingy, a mobile ringtone company, that he grew to $200 million in content sales and sold four years later for 80 million dollars. An avid user of Craigslist, Grinda saw a lot of business potential in creating a free classified site with an improved interface that made it possible for users to search at a global level, embed videos, and post in different languages. “Classifieds are too expensive in many markets around the world, especially emerging countries,” says Grinda. “I wanted to share the free community aspects of Craigslist with the rest of the world,” says Grinda. OLX earns revenue by selling space on the site to advertisers. Grinda got the start-up running in about three months for an initial investment of $30,000. Some of OLX’s features that have changed classified, if not e-commerce as a whole, include a distance field allowing you to see postings within a certain geographic range; the ability to post items in virtual worlds (e.g., SecondLife); the ability to include videos in listings; RSS feeds; the ability to display ads on social networking profiles (such as Facebook and Twitter), and the ability to access the site from mobile phones.

Recent Highlights: According to Grinda, OLX’s recent highlights include “breathtaking growth.” The site is now available in 91 countries and 41 languages.OLX gets 100 million unique users to the site each month—more than Twitter or MySpace—making it one of the largest sites in the world. “Not everyone has heard of us in the US, but we’re much bigger in Brazil and India,” says Grinda.

What’s Next: In addition to continuing to grow OLX around the world, Grinda and his team are in the process of releasing an iPhone app and refocusing their mobile business. Grinda also is an angel investor in 28 start-up Internet companies.

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