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October 2020 www.intellinews.com I Page 18
spending on additional IT infrastructure related to setting up an on-premises system thanks to running its disaster recovery system in the cloud.
Russian ride-hailing service Yango exits Romanian market
Russian ride-hailing application Yango owned by Russian company Yandex announced on October 14 that it would withdraw from Romania within a month, after operating less than one year and a half on the local market.
The company's representatives blamed "rigid legislation in the field of ride-hailing" that did not allow it to develop the service as efficiently as they would like.
The company said it decided "to focus on other countries and business directions."
"Our users in Romania can keep the Yango application to book trips in the other 16 countries where the service is available," said the Yango representatives.
Earlier this year, Yango announced that it had received a two-year technical approval from the Romanian government to operate as a digital alternative transportation brokerage platform. Yango's main local competitors are Uber, Bolt, and Free Now (Clever).
Russia's X5 retailer to exit pick-up point JV
Russia's largest food retailer X5 Retail Group will pull out of the joint venture with Sovcombank on the pick-up point (parcel locker), according to Kommersant daily.
As reported by bne IntelliNews, X5 had a strong head-start on digital innovation in the Russian retail segment and used its advantage to emerge as the largest e-grocer amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown.
At the same time, competition in pick-up points
and express delivery solutions is ramping up in Russia.
"The JV was created in November 2018 and currently operates more than 3,000 parcel lockers in the retailer’s stores," VTB Capital (VTBC) reminds on October 12.
VTBC believes that terminating the JV will allow X5 to focus more on rolling out its own logistics operator, 5Post, which delivers packages from online stores and is set to increase the number of parcel lockers after the break-up by 1,112 to a total of 4,000.
Notably, "that would make it the third-largest operator after Ozon (over 6,000 parcel lockers) and Pickpoint (4,800 own locations)," VTBC notes, while X5 plans to boost the 10,000 parcel lockers to about 10,000 (including pickup points) as
a medium-term target.
VTBC believes that new businesses in the areas of online trade and delivery, being an important pillar of X5’s strategy, will account for 20% of turnover by 2029.
Booking.com ‘expected to open Turkey office, agree to pay taxes’
Online reservation giant Booking.com is expected to set up an office in Turkey and pay taxes following the introduction of the country’s new internet and social media regulations, Daily Sabah reported on October 14.
The regulations have come under fire as they allow officials to remove content deemed unlawful and require the big foreign internet and social media companies, including Facebook and Google, to store local users’ data in Turkey and have a local representative in the country. Companies that don’t comply can have their bandwidth squeezed to the point that their operations in Turkey will become non-viable. Facebook has announced it will not comply with the new regulations. Its resistance will first