Page 35 - bne_November 2020_20201104

bne November 2020 Cover story I 35
Bank, bought a significant stake in Magnit, Russia’s biggest supermarket chain, last year that reaches into nearly every town in the country. In addition, VTB has taken over the job of setting up a Post Bank, using the premises of the Russian Post Office that reaches into almost every
conditions, Sova Capital reports, to raise money to continue its expansion.
The e-commerce space is getting increasingly competitive and China’s Russian subsidiary AliExpress Russia is aiming to reach $10bn gross
and Yandex’s valuation has doubled in the last year alone.
Avito, the classifieds giant, was taken over by Naspers last year in a $3.85bn deal, while the explosive growth of the e-commerce company Wildberries, the rising star of Russian e-commerce, broke into the RUB41bn territory last year.
TalentTech is also a recent unicorn arrival and owned by the Severgroup subsidiary, which includes online education platform Netology.
This year Russia nanotube producer OCSiAl's valuation topped $1bn, making it the state-owned technology organ Rosnano's first unicorn.
Online recruitment platform HeadHunter has sealed its position as a $1bn tech company after a new multi-million dollar share deal confirmed the company’s soaring valuation in July this year. Headhunter became the first Russian- born firm to go for a US IPO since the imposition of sanctions following the annexation of Crimea in May 2019
and had a market capitalisation of around $200mn last year until Goldman Sachs paid $101mn this year for a 9.9% stake, quintupling the company’s valuation at the stroke of a pen.
“China’s Russian subsidiary AliExpress Russia is aiming to reach $10bn gross merchandise volume by 2022-2023, and has not ruled out
a future IPO”
village as well. VTB has already brought Magnit into the Post Office deal which will open post offices in Magnit’s stores.
Russian steel tycoon Alexei Mordashov is following the same logic when he bought into Lenta, one of Russia’s
five big supermarket chains last
year, beating out a bid by Magnit to take the company over.
To battle these giants, the big-three Russian e-commerce company Ozon Holdings announced in October it will IPO either at the end of this year or the start of next, depending on market
merchandise volume by 2022-2023, and has not ruled out a future IPO. Ivi.ru, the Russian answer to Netflix, has also expressed an interested in a New York-based IPO later this year as it seeks more funds for its growth too.
Unicorns
The growing size of Russia’s new economy has already produced
two dozen unicorns, companies
that are valued at over $1bn. Unsurprisingly, NASDAQ-listed Yandex and LSE-listed Mail.Ru Group led the ranking, with capitalisations of $20.6bn and $6.2bn respectively,
www.bne.eu