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bne July 2022 Companies & Markets I 31
and the share price on NASDAQ jumped by 12% when they were announced.
Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky wrote that Yandex’s move “could be seen as a template for Big Tech”, granting bodies comprised of NGOs and university representatives
a veto on socially sensitive issues in return for the ability to satisfy shareholder and customer demands in all other spheres. “Silicon Valley should pay attention,” he added.
Stop spreading the news
The EU defended its designation to designate Volozh by accusing Yandex of “promoting state media and narratives in its search results, and de-ranking and removing content critical of the Kremlin”.
This characterisation is at odds with the assessment of renowned Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan (the head of RT), who once dubbed Yandex “worse than Google” for all the “anti-government content” which it promotes.
Volozh and Yandex have come under criticism for the company’s news aggregator service, which currently appears on the homepage. In fact, the service isn’t called “news”, but rather, “what’s in the Russian media today”, and it produces
“Although most of its business was still in Russia, Yandex could rival any of its global peers in terms of its technology and innovation”
the top headlines from Russian media at any given time. The problem with this service is that as a news aggregator, it is legally required to source headlines from media outlets officially listed on the Russian media watchdog’s register. Moreover, new legislation introduced after Russia’s invasion
of Ukraine placed further restrictions on local media, for example requiring them to refer to the war as a “special operation”, further skewing the results of the service towards the Russian government line on Ukraine.
According to one industry insider, “the news service has been somewhat problematic for a while as, over time, it has been
“The EU accuses Yandex of “promoting state media and
narratives in its search results, and de-ranking and removing content critical of the Kremlin”
required to show an increasingly narrow view of the world. But until the war started it was still relatively harmless. And maybe there was even some value to users in showing what the Russian media was writing about. After 24 February, everything changed, and the service became toxic.”
In the days following the start of the war, Yandex announced that it was exploring options to dispose of the news service.
What happens next
After the tragic death of his friend and co-founder Segalovich, Volozh told Meduza, he felt the need to keep improving the endeavour that they had started. “You have
to keep building the company, so that you can leave a
living system for whomever comes next, who will also keep building this system,” he said. Yandex will rumble on without the direction of Volozh, too, although it may be a different company in his absence.
Arkady Volozh is understood to be preparing to appeal against his designation.
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Russia’s top retail and tech companies
join forces to hunt for innovations in
the rest of the world
BAs Russia’s retail and tech sectors consolidate, the leading companies are turned their gaze outwards to hunt for
Contents
Top stories
Russia’s top retail and tech companies join forces to hunt for innovations in the rest of the world 2 Ukraine-born startups raised more
than half a billion dollars in 2019 4 Russian video streaming platforms
gain speed 5 Cloud services take off in Russia 6 SEMrush to SEO success 8
Leaders 9
Russia’s internet giant Yandex
announces growing and more
diversified revenues in 2019 10 Russian telecom major Rostelecom misses on earnings in 4Q19, cash
flow solid 12
Investment 13
World Bank approves $35mn project
to modernise Kyrgyz tax administration and statistical system 13 Romanian online home decoration
retailer raises €3.5mn in bonds 14 Russian billionaires Abramovich, Gutseriev, said to invest in Telegram
crypto project TON 14 Russian fund Da Vinci Capital gets
€30mn from Germany’s DEG to invest
in Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan 15
Fintech & E-commerce 16
Russian e-commerce major
Wildberries to add self-employed
vendor products to offering 16 Russian Dixy retailer to launch online sales with Ozon 17 Valuation of Sistema’s e-commerce
asset Ozon boosted to $1.8bn 17
Telecom 19
Makedonski Telekom’s net profit
up 6% y/y in 2019 19 Romanian telco Digi grows by double
digit rates in 2019 19 Russia could postpone 5G rollout
from 2022 to 2024 20
NIBs 21
new technology and innovation.
See page 2
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Ukraine-born startups raised more
than half a billion dollars in 2019
In 2019, the venture capital and private equity funding volume for Ukrainian and Ukrainian-founded tech startups reached $544mn (up from $323mn in 2018 and $265mn in 2017), says AVentures Capital’s latest industry report ”DealBook of Ukraine”,
reports Adrien Henni of Ukraine Digital News. See page 4
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