Booking.com will give data to consumers in emerging markets to access its site

Booking.com has signed on to try a new blockchain-based data marketplace aimed at helping brands connect with users in emerging markets.

Through its partnership with the new ODX, or Open Data Exchange, consumers will be able to access the Booking.com site without paying for data.

That alleviates the primary barrier to entry for online shopping for millions of consumers in emerging markets in Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

“Eighty-percent of all internet users in the world live in an emerging market,” says Nix Nolledo, founder and CEO of ODX.

“And more than 90% of internet users in those markets are online less than six days a month because mobile data access is prohibitively expensive, and free public Wi-Fi is scarce.

"The user constantly has to decide, 'Do I buy internet access today?' You have another layer of friction and that is the pain point we want to solve.”

The premise is simple: bring together publishers - any companies that rely on e-commerce - to buy data at scale and use it to provide free access to their site for consumers.

ODX currently has more than 50 partners signed up across a variety of sectors, from travel and dining to entertainment, retail and home goods. In addition to Booking.com, travel partners include Asian hotel companies Red Planet Hotels, Zen Rooms and Artemis Place Makati, taxi-hailing app Hirna and bus booking platform Biyaheroes.

Booking.com says there are often challenges to connecting to the internet in emerging markets and says it has chosen to test the ODX platform because unlimited, data-free access to its site fits with its goal to take friction out of travel and empower people to experience the world.

Test and learn

Nolledo tested the concept late last year under the name MakeFree with a handful of e-commerce partners. For that test, MakeFree paid for the internet access for users.

“The results were transformative,” he says.

“The customer acquisition cost dropped from $4 to less than a dollar. The average time spent on those various apps and websites more than doubled. And for every 100 gigabytes of data we sponsored, we drove more than $18,000 worth of transactions across the platform."

In order to scale the platform, Nolledo knew he would need to decentralize it from a governance perspective, so any stakeholder large or small could participate equally.

The user constantly has to decide, 'Do I buy internet access today?' You have another layer of friction and that is the pain point we want to solve.

Nix Nolledo - ODX

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“If we don’t do that, we’d become a centralized authority who gets to decide who’s in and who’s out,” he says.

“And if you rely on management to decide and to physically onboard each and every partner, in some countries that’s actually technically illegal.”

To create an open platform that anyone can join, Nolledo turned to blockchain, which is inherently transparent, accessible and immutable, to house the ODX marketplace.

Through a private token sale, ODX has raised $60 million, backed by investors including Andromeda Capital, BlockTower Capital, Pantera Capital, Strong Ventures and Wavemaker Genesis.

Nolledo says it's using the ODX tokens to give the launch partner publishers a free trial when the marketplace opens in the next few months, so they can test the concept and “compare unit economics.” The service will begin in the Philippines with plans to roll it out in other parts of Southeast Asia next.

After the trial, publishers will have to pay to provide data for users to access their sites, but he says all publishers will pay the same rate regardless of the quantity of data they buy.

ODX will also have a public initial coin offering at a later date.

The Facebook effect

Years ago Facebook took steps to provide access to users in emerging markets through its Facebook Zero and Free Basics initiatives. Nolledo says Facebook’s success inspired him to create ODX.

“In most emerging markets, Facebook is free to surf,” Nolledo says.

“What if any website or app can be like a free Facebook and get ultra-high consumer engagement? If you have a strong business model, certainly if users are able to spend more time with you, the opportunity to generate more revenue and deliver value is very high.”