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Fintech & E-commerce
December 2020 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
up 267% from 2018. The marketplace ranked only 26th among Russian e-commerce sites, according to Data Insight. In addition, note industry analysts, Goods.ru is tightly integrated with M.Video’s retail business, which could complicate its interconnection with Sber’s own ecosystem.
Sberbank has made huge strides over the past decade from being a national savings bank to becoming a digital giant. Its large ecosystem – which it implicitly compares with Amazon and Apple – includes first-rank players in driving services (through O2O and 2GIS), media and entertainment (through the acquisitions of Rambler, Okko and Zvooq), online pharmacy (Eapteka), and some other sectors.
Whether the group will finally succeed in establishing a firm foothold in e-commerce will be among the most interesting intrigues of the coming years in the Russian digital space.
Russian e-commerce on the rise
According to market research agency Data Insight, online sales of physical goods in Russia
could reach RUB2.5 trillion this year ($32bn at the current exchange rate) and potentially some RUB7 trillion (nearly $90bn) by 2024.
The market is highly fragmented. Russia’s five largest online retailers and marketplaces account for under a quarter of the total industry. By comparison, Amazon alone controls half of the US commerce market, and more than a third
in key European countries.
Among the top players on this market are notably: Wildberries, which raked in RUB100bn ($1.3bn) in quarterly revenue over Russia’s spring lockdown; Ozon, which has just been introduced triumphantly on the NASDAQ; AliExpress Russia, a joint venture involving Alibaba, Mail.Ru Group, Russian telco MegaFon and sovereign fund RDIF; and Yandex.Market, which raised $1bn earlier this year to support its ambitious plans.
This article first appeared in East-West Digital News, a partner of bne IntelliNews
FPRI BMB Russia: Sberbank releases a three-year transformation strategy to e-commerce concern
Sberbank released its latest three-year strategy on December 1, and despite the bank’s rebranding to Sber, it has a ways to go to become a bona fide tech company. By 2023, Sber plans to earn just 5% of its revenue from its non-financial businesses. Come 2030, the firm hopes this figure will grow
to 20-30% of net operating income.
In growing its non-financial holdings, Sberbank will focus on e-commerce, entertainment, cloud services, education, and healthcare.
As Sber’s key non-financial holdings are in fast- growing sectors of the economy, their revenues should double annually, company executive Lev Khasis projects.
To achieve its ambitious goals, Sberbank is prepared to spend 4% of its capital on building its non-financial ecosystem, the bulk of which will go toward e-commerce. By 2023, Sberbank should be a top-3 market player in Russian e-commerce, and by 2030, the firm should be the industry leader.
Sberbank has made several attempts to develop its e-commerce portfolio. It sought to partner with China’s Alibaba to no success. It created a joint venture with Yandex, but relinquished it when the firms split earlier this year. And it sought to buy a 30% stake in Ozon, Russia’s original e-commerce company that just IPOed last week.