Dridco prepares arrival in Brazil
Valor Econômico
The environment is typical of the "dot-com": many employees below 35, no ties, snacks and sodas in nearly all desks. But nobody loses the seriousness at Dridco, the largest company of online ads of Argentina, especially when it comes to its arrival in Brazil. With plans to invest US$ 32.5 million in 2011 - 30% more than the all the earnings expected for the period -, the company has turned the Brazilian market into the priority bet to expand its businesses in the horizon of three to four years.
The forecast is that the beginning of the virtual operations should occur in the first half. The pages are already registered. In February, Dridco intends to put up a sales office with nearly 30 people in São Paulo. But it expects to give a jump in the end of the year, with the intensification of the marketing campaigns, most of them concentrated in the very online world. Real estate, jobs and vehicles are - in that order - the priorities of the company in the Brazilian market, which shall receive from 15% to 20% of the investments.
"It would be a waste for us not to bet on Brazil. Otherwise, in ten years from now, we'll be telling each other how dumb we were", jokes Guido Grinbaum, the well-humored founding partner and President of the company. Besides Argentina, which today represents 75% of the annual earnings, Dridco also operates in Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. In those countries, it already has commercial offices. There are also virtual operations - much smaller - in Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama and Peru.
Five different sites are maintained by Dridco: DeMotores (buying and selling of cars, motorbikes and boats), ZonaJobs (job offer portal), ZonaProp (rental and sale of real estate), ZonaCitas (relationships) and NexoLocal (free ads that work mainly as advertisements for other services). In Brazil, the intention is to direct the initial focus towards the real estate segment. "That is the most deficient area in the Brazilian market. Then we will get into the segment of jobs, but with a model contrary to Catho's, charging from the advertising companies, not from the applicants. The car part is well served, but we believe there's room for another one", says Grinbaum.
In the estimates of Dridco, the market of online ads in Brazil will increase from the current US$ 125 million to US$ 740 million in 2014, representing 48% of total generated in Latin America. "We not necessarily have to be leaders in Brazil. If we have a share of that we will already be fairly satisfied", he considers. In Argentina, Dridco has between 40% and 60% of the online ads, depending on the segment.