OLX fires 50 employees and analyzes the closure of the local operation

OLX, the virtual clbadifieds company of the South African fund Naspers, laid off 50 employees and discusses the limitation of local activity. "For the moment, it's not a closure, but it's a total reconversion of the company"According to a source close to the company, the company 's employees are talking about definitive closure in the midst of great uncertainty. Agustín Garicoche, the local CEO, did not answer the call of Infobae.

It is about one of the so-called local technological unicorns, companies worth over $ 1,000 million, founded in 2006 by the local entrepreneur Alec Oxenford, who was absent from society in recent years (he even retired from the local directory a few months ago) and is now focusing on letgo, another digital company of Naspers.

As you may have known Infobaedismissals took place at the company's head office, in the Belgrano, from which he serves and gives services to the overall operation, and in the branches of the interior, such as Córdoba.

A few months ago, the company revised its strategy of selling all kinds of second-hand products, to focus on vertical sectors such as cars and properties.. Now, I would also try to use the Buenos Aires Technology Center – which has not been fired for the time being – to continue exporting services. With all, This is one of the issues that has threatened the company since the government imposed an export tax that applies to knowledge-based services as early as this year.

In the middle of last year, OLX had finalized the purchase of Properati, a technology SME specializing in the real estate market. This business would continue without change.

"This is the first and only global Internet brand not to have been developed in Silicon Valley." Oxenford describes OLX, his second "baby". By the end of the 1990s, in the middle of the dot-com bubble, he had launched DeRemate, an online auction site that competed with Mercado Libre in the region, and had lost the battle. Years later, he teamed with French Fabrice Grinda and founded OLX.

They were both co-CEOs for six years and Grinda left in 2012. The OLX business has always been the world, never Argentina. Although the country has always handled a good deal of the overall operation. For this startup, Oxenford used what he defined as Martian approach, or think of the company as a Martian recently arrived on Earth.

"For many, it is reasonable to start with the country of origin and then eventually to visit the region and the world. We decided to do the opposite: think like a Martian who arrives on Earth and who needs to see the real direction and opportunities. We have seen the evidence. For potential and development, we needed to focus on India, China, Brazil and Russia. We did it very fast. Nearly five years later, we launched the operation in Argentina, although the seat he was still there"he said in the book The new Argentine kings.

OLX started operating in India, then in Russia, Brazil and also in countries in Africa and Asia-Pacific, many of which were absolute leaders. In 2010, the Naspers fund, which already held 67.8% of the company, took almost everything: 95%. The transaction, the figure of which was not made public, was about 200 million USD. and Oxenford remained with management and with a minority share of the shares.

Oxenford – who was the first chief of Maria Eugenia Vidal in the Sophia group, one of the thinking group which gave rise to PRO- by 2015, OLX moved away from OLX to focus on Letgo, a similar project but focused on the United States.

"One day, we get up and realize that there is a budget process to review, typical of a large company, with more than 1,500 employees, I do not think I will be alone in the board of directors of a company at the moment.What happens is that the entrepreneurial part of it covered the great challenge of competing in the first leagues with Letgo, "he said. a few years ago.

Now, the society that has promised a world revolution is going through a serious crisis in the country where it was born. Will there be a new Martian approach to save OLX Argentina?