India Still Needs Its Own Craigslist
OLX tried. Quikr tried. Neither got it right. The opportunity is still wide open.
I keep coming back to this idea every few years. India still does not have a proper classifieds site that works the way Craigslist works in the US.
OLX exists, yes. Quikr existed. But they both went the app-first, VC-funded, growth-at-all-costs route. They added features nobody asked for. They tried to "improve" on the Craigslist model by making it prettier, more social, more app-like.
They missed the point entirely.
What Craigslist Gets Right
Craigslist works because it is boring. It loads fast. It has zero friction. You can post in 30 seconds. The design is ugly but functional. And because of this, it has become infrastructure. People in San Francisco use Craigslist the way people in Mumbai use WhatsApp groups for buying and selling.
The WhatsApp Problem
In India, the classified market moved to WhatsApp groups. Every apartment complex, every neighborhood, every college has buying/selling WhatsApp groups. This works but it is terrible. No search. No archive. No way to browse. Messages get buried in 200 "good morning" forwards from your uncle.
What Would Work
A text-first, mobile-web-first classifieds site. No app download required. City-based. Neighborhood-based. As fast and ugly as Craigslist. With WhatsApp as the contact method (because nobody in India will give you their phone number to a stranger, but WhatsApp feels safer for some reason).
The hard part is not the technology. The hard part is getting the initial supply of listings in one city. You would need to start in one neighborhood of one city and grow from there.
I keep almost building this. Maybe someday.
- Mohan
- Mohan