Of love, life and the internet

Aug 14 - Happy independence day Pakistan and advance wishes to India.

Been a busy time - elder bro’s wedding in Delhi. Now back to UK for final pack and move (I’m nearly independent). Before I get to my main topic, here’s a bit of my usual randomness:

- My TV was bought by a photographer whose last assignment involved Indian vineyards and Chinese surfers. Talk about the offline long tail!
- I’ve become hooked to the US TV show, Entourage. Better late than never.
- I’m having shouting matches with the estate agent whilst I attempt to sell some of our stuff. Not easy being a charming salesman when someone’s stealing your deposit.

So here’s the serious bit. I hereby present to you: The OLLATI Guide to moving outside the UK - Online! (Let’s begin..)
- Mobile Phones: My wife and I are with O2 for mobile. I was on a simplicity plan and the helpline lady suggested that I just convert my number to a pre-pay rather than have to give 30 days notice to cancel my simplicity account. Great suggestion - bonus points to her. My wife’s on an iphone contract which is water tight so we’re going to live with that one for a while.
- Broadband and Landline: Virgin was relatively painless and agreed to cancel our contract a few short of the initial agreement since we were moving abroad. I can’t image BT or any other provider being that nice.
- Utilities: Thames Water had a good online form for movers. We need to call them with our meter reading on our last day. British Gas was not so ‘internet friendly’ for people moving abroad. They only catered to moves within the UK - so had to make a phone call for that one!
- Council Tax: It was a simple online form but I had to call Camden council to actually process the paperwork. Turns out we have a credit balance (!!). Anyway - short email for authorisation .. hope to see that moolah soon!
- Income Tax: Apparently 2/3 of people leaving UK do not claim a tax refund. On average people leaving are due £700 in income tax refund. Very simple and friendly section online- http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/incometax/refund-reclaim.htm. When we called the office, they sent the case for assessment and so let’s see how this works out for us!
- Shipping: I look at several online services and got quotes from many. For some 3 weeks notice was too less. The quotes for about 10 boxes ranged from £150 - 600. While price was a big consideration, I also found Seven Seas to be the most responsive, the most friendly online interface. The box deliveries were prompt on the next day in the hourly slot they emailed beforehand. The online reviews that I have read are mixed. For a relatively straightforward case (no midway change of plans), I’m hoping they’ll do an OK job. I’ve asked for Door to Depot cause it’s much cheaper and they allow more weight per box. There will be charges to pay at the other end but I’m hoping it will be less than the £80-100 they ask us to budget
(the best part of the seven seas site was they offer an income tax refund service based on no refund-no payment. Their tax consultant on the phone was very polite as well)
- House Contract: This is the sensitive one. The landlady is very old and hence we deal with the agent. We’ve definitely been misled on our contract. During signing and the renewal we had asked to include a 6 month break-clause in our contract. This was inserted and when we exercised the break clause during month 9 in the 12 month term, the estate agent insists that we could only exercise the break clause at month 6 (not a day before, not a day after!!). Anyway, I know how to read English - that’s not what our contract says. Two lawyers (one independent, one friend) agree with my interpretation, so it may be that we’ll have to go to court over the security deposit. Apparently - this 6 month thing has become a common dispute around the break clause in London tenancy contracts. The recurring theme is poorly drafted contracts with ambiguous wording (I smell a rat or two).A great discovery was the Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme. There are big penalties attached to the landlord/ agent in case they don’t comply. http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/tenancydepositschemes.
- County Court: to understand on how to make a small claim, this artcile was useful - http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bargains-and-rip-offs/article.html?in_article_id=417663&in_page_id=5. I’ve been trying to look online for a good/ cost effective lawyer. This site promised to help, but never heard back http://www.qualitysolicitors.com/find-a-solicitor/locations/find-solicitors-london.html
- Selling second hand stuff: This is the interesting part. My experience with online classifieds.

1. In London, there’s no beating gumtree. The interface, the features, the service may be perfect - but the classified service will only be as good as the network. Half of London is on gumtree. The analytics around the number of views is very welcome.
2. Craigslist was the simplest and easiest for posting and ad.  
3. OLX allowed me to upload as many pictures as I wanted - that was important for someone who has many things to sell
4. Vivastreet was mediocre in all senses
5. Gumtree only allowed 3 photos and was charging for posting an ad for house rentals. Not so happy with that.
6. For specialist stuff, like my 4 pet terrapins (cooter, columbus, baba and chutki), I was advised to advertise on specialist forums (with a 1980s design and interface) - but it worked! the offer I received was about 3x the best offer for gumtree.
7. Separate ads worked better than the combined ‘house clearance’ ad.
8. TV and microwaves are hot items - several enquiries!
9. Anyone want to buy a 1964 Encyclopedia Brittanica?

That’s all from the OLLATI guide. Happy Moving! (or as they say in India - Shifting!)

By the time the author finished it was Aug 15… Independence Day in India. Not quite there yet in London.

The following is an email interview of Fabrice Grinda, CEO of OLX. While I’m new to the space of online classifieds, I think these guys are on the right track. All the best to them!

Question: Tell us more about OLX story - who are the people, what was the inspiration, what motivates you about the space?

The decision to start OLX came from the observation of 5 large trends in the world:
1. A transition from offline media consumption to online media consumption.
2. A transition from offline advertising to online advertising.
3. A transition from paid business models to free online ad supported business models.
4. Emerging market growth with both GDP per capita and online media consumption growing faster in the developing world than the developed world.
5. An ongoing and massive disruption in the $100 billion classifieds space away from newspapers first to paid vertical sites then to free horizontal classified sites. As that trend was largely underway in the US and Western Europe, but at its infancy in the developing world, we felt there was a unique opportunity to build a next generation free classified site for the world.

Beyond the macro trends, we love the business. I am an economist at heart and I find it incredibly gratifying to be giving opportunities to people to trade goods, find jobs, houses, etc. all for free! By being free we are growing the market and providing opportunities to people who would have never had them given the costs of print ads.

My partner Alec, Amar, the Indian country manager and I all have auction backgrounds and love marketplace businesses with user generated content.

Question 2. How do you see OLX differentiating itself from well established brands - craigslist in US, gumtree in UK, slando in Eastern Europe etc. Do you have a vision on how the company will shape up in 3-5 years time?

We feel there are significant opportunities for product and business model innovation in the space.

Business model wise, we are 100% free to post and intend to remain free to post. Craigslist, Gumtree, etc. have started charging for jobs, real estate and other categories in certain cities. We feel that charging limits the number of ads on the site which we is a detriment to the user experience. We want our users to find whatever it is they are looking for.

From a product perspective, we aspire to be as good in every vertical as the best paid vertical sites. Already we have a number of innovations relative to many of our competitors:
· We have a fantastic mobile version such as http://m.olx.in reachable from any cell phone.
· We allow users to promote their listings automatically on social networks.
· We have a rich WYSIWYG editor allowing users to create colorful postings without knowing HTML.
· We support photos and videos.
· The site is multilingual even within countries with 39 languages supported.
· We have powerful search functions in real estate and cars.

Question 3. For an online buyer-seller marketplace, increasing participation from both sides is a chicken and egg problem. How do you go about solving that?

We have solved the problem in 4 ways:
· We spend a fair amount on online marketing.
· We run classifieds for many high traffic sites such as Friendster, MySpace Latin America, Sonico and Hindustan Times.
· We approach real estate brokers, car dealers and head hunters to convince them to give us feeds with their content.
· We have acquired many free classified sites in the past few years to help us reach critical mass faster. Mundoanuncio.com in Spain is an example of one such acquisition.

4. Tell us what you specifically think about the online classifieds industry in India - the potential, the challenges and any unique observations you may have made.

India is still a young classifieds market. Contrarily to the US and Western Europe newspapers are still growing their circulation. Online classifieds is a small and relatively new category with a lot of potential. We have had to make many adjustments to adapt to local mores including adding Hindi support, focusing on mobile and creating a matrimonial and a paying guest category.