Russian Internet giant Yandex invests $500 million to increase e-commerce investment

According to Reuters, Russian Internet giant Yandex plans to invest $400 million to $500 million in e-commerce in 2021 to help the company's annual revenue growth.

Yandex 's full-year and fourth-quarter financial report for 2020 released on February 16 showed that its annual revenue last year reached 218.3 billion rubles (about 19.1 billion yuan) , a year-on-year increase of 24% from 2019.

It is reported that Yandex's investment in the e-commerce field will help the company increase its annual revenue to 305 billion to 320 billion rubles (about 26.7 billion to 28 billion yuan).

Advertising has always been Yandex's core business, but this business segment suffered a huge impact from the epidemic last year. Fortunately, due to the surge in Russian consumers' interest in online shopping, Yandex's other businesses have seen growth.

Yandex Chief Financial Officer Greg Abovsky said the company's business segments that benefited from the pandemic will continue to grow this year, including media services, e-commerce and grocery delivery. Yandex's investment will be used for the company's e-commerce business (Yandex.Market) and grocery business (Yandex.Lavka and Yandex.Eats).

Daniil Shuleyko , CEO of Yandex's automotive business Yandex.Taxi, said that last year, the total GMV of the three business segments Yandex.Market, Yandex.Lavka and Yandex.Eats reached 24 billion rubles (about 2.1 billion yuan), almost five times that of 2019. This makes Yandex one of the leaders in the Russian e-commerce market.

Yandex.Market is a price comparison shopping website under the company. It was launched on November 30, 2000 and became an independent company from Yandex in 2016. In 2018, the Russian Federal Savings Bank cooperated with Yandex.Market to launch a new e-commerce platform Beru, which mainly sells local Russian products, but the two canceled the cooperation a year later and Beru was incorporated into Yandex.Market.

Last year was the "golden age" of e-commerce. The sales share of third-party buyers on Yandex.Market doubled to 63.5%. This was also due to the platform's entry policy. It is reported that Yandex.Market updated the platform's commission rate at the end of last year, from the original 3%-20% to 2% for all categories.

Russia

E-commerce