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30 I Cover story bne November 2020
X5 is the biggest supermarket operator in Russia and is going through a radical digitisation of its business. Photos: X5 Retail Group.
The Russian retail digital revolution
of the X5 supermarket chain
Ben Aris in Berlin
It's been on the Kremlin’s agenda for years, but now the Russian economy is finally being rapidly digitalised. The coronacrisis has accelerated the process after everyone was locked up
at home in the summer and forced
to buy their groceries online, but the pandemic didn't create a new trend; it only made the existing ones move faster.
“There [are] no new trends or revolution to the existing trends.
All that happened is the trends that existed before the coronavirus have just
become a lot stronger. That has led to new opportunities. (I don't want to say benefits),” Vladimir Salakhutdinov, the head of strategy at X5 Retail Group told bne IntelliNews in an exclusive interview.
For years the leading supermarket chains were growing as fast as they could in a race to capture market share while it was still up for grabs. However, that process has come to an end as
the market reaches maturity and the leading companies have started to focus more on profitability than expansion.
X5 overtook its rival Magnit about
two years ago to become the market leader in terms of turnover and just announced a radical transformation at its capital markets day on October 27 that will put the customer at the centre of its focus.
“We understand that TV ads used to be the number [one] place where people got information about food but now there are all sorts of new variants:
a food blog, interest in healthy food, what the celebrities are eating, etc. The customer only goes to the store
“There [are] no new trends or revolution to the existing trends. All that happened is the trends that existed before the coronavirus have just become a lot stronger.
That has led to new opportunities”
Vladimir Salakhutdinov
the head of strategy at X5 Retail Group