Online pre-owned good seller Olx, which is backed by over $20-billion Naspers group, will start focussing on monetising its India business after clocking a 10-fold growth, a top company official has said. Also, the online classifieds platform aims to double its monthly active users to 10 crore from the current 5 crore.
Olx India country head Sushil Kumar said, “The focus from investor and our board is of growing India business by at least 10 times and then think about monetisation. If we can deliver value to our investor then money will come as a byproduct. Putting a cap on monetisation will limit our long-term ambition.”
The company reached break-even in the financial year 2018 with profit after tax of around Rs 15 crore.
Olx is still in the investment mode and not focussing on profits, Kumar told agencies.
“At Olx, our focus is not obtaining positive cash flow or profits because that limits our ambition to grow. That has been the philosophy at Olx that look at the opportunity and accordingly do investment. If we find growth opportunity we will continue to invest,” he said.
The focus of the company for the next year is to double car sales business, see a tow-fold rise in monthly active users from 5 crore to 10 crore and grow jobs segment, Kumar noted.
“Olx already has traffic. Aasaanjobs has the experience to find jobs for them (blue collar workers). This is a very vertical which is being heavily promoted today. There is definitely a play in this vertical. Honestly, how we are going to play in this vertical and capture it, we don’t know today,” Kumar said.
Olx acquired Aasaanjobs early this year for a disclosed amount.
Kumar said that Olx will first start to build around its strength to cater to job segment and might look at upskilling the aspirants in blue collar jobs category.
He added that the platform will continue to focus on the sale of pre-owned goods and focus on doubling business in a category where it starts getting traction.
